Wildmoore (2020)

Theodosia McPhee was dying, and no one knew why. 

The ordeal began shortly after her father moved the pair into Wildmoore Estate, wooing his daughter away from city life with talk of magnificent landscaping and stellar views of the countryside. And they were stellar—the estate sat high on a hill, overlooking the rolling farmland of the county, pleasantly dotted with quaint houses and outcroppings of trees. From the enormous windows of the second-floor sitting room, one could see for miles on a clear day. But in the weeks since Theodosia and her father moved into the home, the panes of glass only mocked her, like a jewel just out of a thief's reach. She’d ventured out only once before the affliction ensnared her, just two weeks after she’d arrived at her new home. 

On a blustery Tuesday morning, Theodosia’s nose began to bleed as she readied herself at her vanity. Startled but unmoved, she’d merely dabbed the blood from her face with a kerchief and waited for the flow to end. Soon, though, a stiffness afflicted her joints, starting in her wrists and moving up to her elbows, then down into her spine and knees. It devolved into an all-over ache, as if she were contracting influenza. But there was no fever. No sniffling, nor sweating, and thus, Theodosia believed it would all pass. It took one week of bleeding and aches before she allowed her father to send for a doctor from the city.  

A doctor came quickly. Theodosia was never quite sure if the man’s enthusiasm was a genuine desire to assist an ailing woman or a grandiose compulsion to serve her father. She bet on the latter. This first physician, a slight, black-haired man in his late fifties, stalked into her bedchamber and examined her, grasping at her knees, ankles, elbows, and shoulders, asking what hurt and what did not. He pushed his circular glasses up the bridge of his nose and concluded that she was lacking in some vital minerals. He prescribed a tonic, taken by mouth twice daily, which tasted of salt and juniper. He collected his fee and left. And three days after he proclaimed his work done, Theodosia’s hair started falling out. 

First it was a few strands at a time, tangling themselves around Theodosia’s thin fingers as she ran them through her tresses. Then it began to fall in clumps, pulling more and more each time a brush passed through it. Her father sent an urgent letter to the doctor, describing Theodosia’s new symptoms, pleading for advice, begging him to come back and consider a different diagnosis. The dark-haired physician never answered. A sorely tired Theodosia tied a silken scarf about her head and resigned herself to a chair in the parlor, nestled between the windows and the fireplace.

Soon after came the coughing, beginning gentle but quickly hollowing into a morbid rattling between her ribs and spine. After a bout of the stuff knocked her fragile form off balance, Theodosia spent more and more time tucked up in bed. She ate less and less, until her maid had to bribe her with tea and sugar to make her take a meal at all. Charles McPhee spent his waking hours writing letters to experts in the nearby cities, sitting in his study with the door firmly shut. Some nights, when Theodosia passed his door on her way to her bed, she pressed her ear against the wood. Inside, she heard only the furious scratching of pen on paper and the hushed cursing of a man who had just moved seventy miles from the nearest hospital. 

Two months after the McPhees left the city, Ezra Lockhart received a letter in the mail. It was written on fine parchment and stamped with an oddly familiar wax seal. He peeled it open as he took breakfast in his kitchen, eyes scanning the tidy handwriting from behind tiny glasses. His mouth twisted below his mouse-brown mustache. The letter was from Charles McPhee, a name he recognized but could not place. Puzzled, he examined the seal once more, then glanced across his countertop. There, upon the side of a bag of fine white flour, was stamped the very same seal. None other than Charles McPhee, the illustrious grain-milling magnate, had sent him a letter. 

Ezra sighed and continued to read. 

The heiress to the McPhee fortune was grievously and mysteriously ill, and given the account in his hands, it was no ordinary ailment. Her symptoms were too varied, too common for a cause to be clearly defined, but her condition was declining swiftly enough as to be alarming. She had no fever, ruling out all influenzas he knew of. No shaking, no hemorrhaging; it was not the rattling plague. Ezra wondered if her skin was pallid, or sickly green, or perhaps jaundiced, each of which might indicate a different treatment. He did not immediately admit it to himself, but a small piece of him was quite delighted—it had been far too long since Ezra had handled a challenging case.

In his younger years, when he’d begun studying medicine, everything was new and exciting. He relished the mystery of it all, and the science—taking a problem and analyzing it, breaking it down to its components, testing causes and solutions against one another. It was a scientific wonderland. Each new ailment discovered and described fascinated him. And yet, when Ezra graduated university and began his own practice, all the mystery seemed to disappear. Soon, each problem faced was familiar to him. Mundane sicknesses, identical injuries, often down to the circumstances that caused them. These things gave him only minor amusement. Suddenly, Ezra was thirty-eight and utterly bored. 

But now, after all this time, he held a genuine enigma in his hands. And he did not even have to look for it himself. God must have heard his pleas for excitement and delivered Theodosia McPhee directly to him, wrapped in parchment and stamped with a wax seal. 

Ezra Lockhart scribbled a reply to Charles McPhee and began packing his trunk.

Three days later, on a particularly drizzly Thursday, a carriage slowed to stop inside the Wildmoore Estate’s front courtyard. Its door swung open and Ezra stepped down onto the path, the soles of his shoes sinking a half-inch into the thick, cold mud. He frowned down at his feet. He hated most things about the country, and especially its lack of pavement. Assisted by the carriage driver, he brought his luggage to the entryway of the mansion, slamming the knocker a few times. An aging butler answered the door, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Lockhart,” the besuited man said. “We have been expecting you.” 

Ezra nodded and followed him into the foyer. The walls were covered in decorative wallpaper and lined with framed portraits and photos, some with plaques denoting them especially prestigious. Each piece of furniture was carved from the same thick, dark wood, and every piece of hardware was plated in some precious metal or another. These were antiques, dated enough that he guessed them a few generations old. Ezra wondered if the McPhee family had brought their antiques with them from the city, and how much it must have cost them to pack everything. It was all quite gaudy, he decided, and if this were his mansion, he surely would have decorated it completely differently. But as he turned back to the manservant, something else struck the doctor: a sudden twist of dread in the pit of his stomach, like a snake curling itself around a squirming rodent.

“I trust your journey was pleasant,” the butler said, motioning for the doctor to hand over his traveling coat. Ezra blinked as he remembered what he was there for, then smiled politely.

“Yes, it was perfectly fine,” he replied, acquiescing to this friendly protocol. 

When the butler had Ezra’s coat over his arm, he told the doctor, “The master and Miss McPhee await you in the sitting room. Pray leave your luggage here. I will have it delivered to your chambers.” 

Ezra hesitated for the barest moment before he abandoned his suitcase near the entry table. He kept his smaller bag in hand, full of medical equipment and expensive instruments. He’d learned long ago to keep it close. The servant eyed the vessel but said nothing; he merely turned and led Ezra upstairs. 

A receiving room on the second floor, Ezra mused. How unconventional. Perhaps the previous owners used it as a library, or a study, and the McPhees simply repurposed it. Perhaps Theodosia could no longer use the stairs in her ailing condition, and they’d established the space for her. Ezra frowned to himself and continued to climb, hurrying to keep up with the oddly nimble butler. 

When they reached the second floor, the servant led Ezra to the back of the house, where they came upon a huge door covered in ornate carvings of cherubs and wolves. Yet another strange detail, Ezra noted, eyeing the permanently snarling canines. The further he stepped into this home, the uglier and stranger it seemed. The butler rapped his knuckles along the frame.

“Come in,” a voice called. 

Ezra stepped inside, and all doubts about a second-storey receiving room were wiped clean from his mind.

The far wall was barely a wall at all, instead lined almost completely with enormous windows. The curtains were pulled back, and dreary, grey light was pouring into the room, mimicking the damp sky outside. In the field beyond the estate’s fence, mist rolled over the hills and swallowed the little cottages like ocean waves. It was beautiful; picturesque, the kind of scene one might find painted on the walls of a gallery. 

He ripped his gaze away to find his new employer. Charles McPhee was nearby, standing behind a tall-backed chair that faced the windows, one hand gripping its back like a vice. In its seat was a thin-faced woman no older than twenty-two, wrapped from head to toe in quilts and thick wool shawls, as if it were the dead of winter rather than the middle of spring. Her big green eyes were glazed as they stared out into the pastures. When her father turned to greet his guest, a grim expression stretched over his face. 

“Doctor Lockhart,” Charles McPhee said. “Thank you for coming.” Ezra nodded. The wealthy man turned to his daughter. “Theodosia, the doctor is here.” 

The woman turned her face from the window. Her enormous eyes, unblinking and rimmed with purple, seemed to bore holes through him. Theodosia’s skin was pale as paper, and Ezra could see the capillaries spidering across her eyelids. Face framed by a blue silk scarf, she looked like a specter, a banshee ready to scream and send the death rattle through him. 

It took all his might not to retreat from her, to take one or several steps backward, to leave the room and slam the door behind him. Suddenly, Ezra was seven years old, sitting on his mother’s lap in the kitchen of their cottage, savoring the time when they were alone without his father and his belt, listening to her thick Irish voice whisper tales of screaming death-hags. His mother, the slight, dark-eyed woman with trembling hands that smelled of flour and medicine, would press her lips to his forehead, warning him of the day that such a woman would come to him, appearing as if in a fever dream, and would wail the keening scream to tell him of her death. And then, he saw inside his head the horrible grey woman that stood outside the window of his dormitory on the eve of his fourteenth birthday—and finally, he heard the terrible, terrible howling in the night, echoing through his ears just as it had in the stone hallways of his boarding school.

Ezra gulped and steadied himself, hands shaking at his sides. A voice deep inside of him cried out: This is not natural. This is not safe. But he took a breath, and then another, and shoved the fear back inside of him. He looked at Theodosia.

“Hello,” she said quietly. Her voice was wind through reeds.

“Miss McPhee,” he said, bowing his head toward her. 

“Please, there is no need for formalities,” she said. “Call me Theodosia.” 

Ezra nodded in acquiescence, though her words landed like stones in his mind. There was an implication beneath her request, and he did not like it. He had heard this before, from the lips of those who know they are dying, those who see the end before them. Please, do not call me Sir, do not call me Your Grace. There is no grace for a man on his way to hell. The pinched look that came over Charles McPhee’s face seemed to echo Ezra’s thoughts.

“Theodosia,” Ezra said, feeling the syllables drop off his tongue like dew drops from a vine, “I should like to examine you, if it is not too much trouble at the moment.”

“Of course,” she breathed, as if speaking took great energy. A maid dashed closer to take the quilt from Theodosia’s lap, then helped the heiress from her seat. When upright, the ailing woman was much taller than Ezra expected. Her waif-thin wrists dangled from the sleeves of her thick dressing gown, and Ezra noted the way her tendons seemed to jut through her vellum skin—like the heaped soil that betrays a mole tunnel underneath.

“I trust you’d like to conduct the examination in my room,” she said. It was not a question.

“Of course,” Ezra replied. They made their way to Theodosia’s bedroom. It was slow going, full of pauses and wobbling steps. When they arrived, the maid set Theodosia down on the edge of her cushioned bed, pulled the curtains open to let in the light, and curtsied to the woman and the doctor. She left the room hurriedly, casting her watery eyes toward the floor.

“You’ll have to forgive Anna,” Theodosia said.

“Forgive her?” Ezra asked, placing his small black bag on the foot of the bed.

“For crying, sir. She has been our maid since I was very small. I imagine she is having a hard time seeing me in this state.” 

“Ah,” Ezra hummed. He opened the bag to reveal his medical instruments, their polished silver glinting in the grey afternoon light. Theodosia peered absently out the window as Ezra rifled through his bag, finally selecting a stethoscope.

“Are you from the countryside, Dr. Lockhart?” she asked suddenly. Ezra’s mouth tightened slightly.

“No,” he said. “Though, my mother was. Irish countryside, that is.”

There was a long pause between them. Ezra took Theodosia’s pulse, examined her joints, palpated her organs, checked her lungs, her eyes, her throat. He bade her remove her scarf from around her head and examined her balding scalp for signs of rash or irritation. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find—perhaps a swollen node or inflamed esophagus, a raging fever, or some kind of fungus on her skin. In the days leading up to his arrival, he’d imagined this very process countless times. In his daydreams, he’d always found the hidden secret, the symptom that explained the illness in its entirety. And yet, when the moment presented itself to him, there was nothing. The only sign of illness was the rattling in her lungs, but even this would indicate nothing more than chest cold. 

There was no answer. 

Ezra frowned as he packed his things away, cycling through the list of ailments he knew, comparing symptoms and signs, weighing the likelihood of internal infection against some manner of cancer. He must be missing something, he decided. Something was being hidden from him, by the body or its owner. Silently, he swore an oath. He would not leave this house until he knew its name.

“Dr. Lockhart,” Theodosia said, her voice resembling a whisper.

“Yes, Miss McPhee?” he replied, careful to keep his frustration hidden.

“Theodosia, please... Did your mother believe in country remedies? I mean, did she use herbs and things to cure illness?” 

Ezra thought for a moment. He remembered an image, snippets of a moment—supine on a little cot, tucked under a wool blanket even as his skin burned with fever. A wet cloth was draped over his forehead, obscuring the top edge of his vision, but still he saw his mother at the stove, stirring something in an iron pan. Their tiny house smelled of yarrow and elderberry, like grass burnt over a flame. 

Ezra nodded. “Yes. She did.”

“And did they work, Doctor?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

Theodosia smiled slightly, then reached over and retrieved a small china teacup from her bedside table. She held it like it was precious, nesting it between her delicate palms, and tipped it to show Ezra its contents. The liquid was gone, but there were small bits of crushed yarrow and herbs at the bottom. 

“Anna has been making these teas for me since my illness began,” she said. “She is from a little hamlet far to the north, you see, and believes in such things.”

“I see no harm in it,” Ezra said softly, a distinctly green taste filling his mouth as he stared at the mixture. Theodosia set the cup back down on her little table, porcelain clinking gently as it came to rest on the saucer. She folded her hands in her lap, looking down at her bluish fingernails. Ezra thought he saw something sparkle in her eyes.

“Perhaps there is hope for me yet,” she said.

A few hours later, Ezra was summoned to dinner. He followed the lithe butler to the dining room, passing more dark furniture and plaque-bearing portraits as they walked through the winding hallways. When they arrived, Charles McPhee was already sitting at the head of the enormous oak table, and Theodosia was nowhere to be found.

“Ah, Doctor,” Charles said warmly, gesturing for him to take a seat. When Ezra obliged, two apron-wearing servants served them bowls of vegetable soup and a platter of soft rolls.

“I am afraid Theodosia was struck with a coughing fit, and is not feeling well enough to dine with us,” Charles told him.

“That is quite unfortunate, sir,” Ezra said, picking up his spoon. Something other than hunger panged in his stomach.

“How is my daughter, Doctor?” Charles asked, suddenly stern. Ezra took a sip of wine, hiding his frown.

“I am afraid I found little evidence of physical illness, sir, despite her symptoms,” he said. “But fear not. I shall not stop searching for a cause until I find one.” 

His host sighed.

“Your findings, sir, are quite unfortunate, but alas, not unexpected. Many a doctor has come to the same conclusion. However, my friends in London swear by your health regiments, so I am placing my faith in your capability to find and cure what ails my daughter…” Charles paused, as if consumed by thought. Then, he laughed and shook his head. “Come now, we should not spend the evening conversing about what we cannot presently change. You are my guest, and I shall host you well.”

“Thank you, sir. I assure you I have had no reason to complain. Your home is lovely and your staff kind.”

“Yes, Wildmoore does have her charms, regardless of the state of its occupants,” Charles said with a rueful smile. 

“I understand that you’ve only lived here a short time,” Ezra said, eating a spoonful of soup.

“That is correct, Doctor. I bought this estate six months ago, and for quite a lovely price, considering its size and acreage. Theodosia and I moved in only a few short months ago.” 

“Ah, so this is not a family estate, sir?”

“Alas, it is not.”

“And forgive my prying, but is that the reason for the portraits and plaques?” he asked. Charles smiled, but it was a tight expression, and his eyes were flat and dull. It was as if the air had gone out of him. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the clinking of spoons against bowls.

“Yes,” he answered. “All the paintings and such were here when we arrived. We thought it best to leave them in state, out of respect.”

The servants brought the next course—roast fowl and potatoes—and the conversation changed to outdoor sports, and then to matters of parliament, but as the meal ended and Ezra was walking back to his room, he could not help but look at the walls, his eyes trailing over the oil-painted faces. He wondered who these people were, beyond the plaques stating their names and dates of birth and death. What sort of lives had they lived? What sort of worries consumed them? Had their loved ones die of mysterious disease, and had they called doctors from the city as Charles did now? It unsettled Ezra to imagine himself in the shoes of some long-dead physician, and Theodosia following the path of another skeletal woman.

Ezra turned his head away, something shifted in the corner of his eyes—a shadow, black as midnight, tall enough to be a grown adult. He whipped himself about, startled, waiting to find a servant moving silently at the other end of the hallway. But there was no one. He was alone in the hallway, with only grim-faced portraits to keep him company. He cursed his overactive mind and hurried back to his chamber, each step witnessed by a hundred lifeless eyes. 

As Ezra settled between his sheets to sleep, he found himself staring at the ceiling, visions of Theodosia’s bony joints and thinning hair fixed in his sight. They wrestled with shadowy figures until he rolled over and pressed his eyes shut, wondering if he would get any sleep during his stay at Wildmoore Estate.

The next day, Ezra occupied himself with searching the house. He was not sure what he was looking for, but something told him he had to look. He’d studied cases of common household contaminants causing illness in those with poor constitutions, and he knew there were cleaning agents which were toxic when ingested or breathed. Any number of menial acts may have inadvertently caused this crisis—and Ezra could not rule out the possibility that Theodosia was being poisoned. In a case like this, one could not be too careful.

Still, doubt crept into his mind as he scoured the estate. If someone was being careless while they cleaned, why was Charles McPhee somehow unaffected? Or the servants, for that matter? Scientifically, it did not make sense, and he knew it. As Ezra peeked behind curtains and searched the basement with a handkerchief tied around his face, he found nothing but a few spots of dampness that had begun growing mossy tendrils of mildew. Ezra sighed. It was probably nothing. But then again, it may be something.

Objectivity is key, he thought, pulling out a glass sample vial. I must remain open to all options.

All options.

He sat back on his heels with his gathered scraping, remembering a story his mother once told him. Sitting on her lap, sharing the only quilt they owned as they huddled before the kitchen fire, she’d murmured a tale about angry spirits. They linger in the halls of the homes they loved, she’d said, lashing out against the living. They can make you sick. 

“How sick?” he’d asked, resting his head against the warmth of her chest. She pulled the blanket tighter around them. 

Sick enough to kill you, she whispered. That is why you must always respect the spirits, always leave them honeyed gifts, never taint their sacred spaces. 

Ezra remembered nodding, promising his mother he’d always heed her warnings, and then falling asleep curled up against her, listening to her sing a quiet fairy song.

Ezra found more moldy patches in the corner of Theodosia’s room, near the ceiling, hiding behind a thick iron curtain rod. It was a thick mass of the stuff, black and fuzz-covered and ugly. He ordered a servant to clean it thoroughly with bleach and clean water, and to wear linen gloves and a thick cotton mask while doing it. If there were a stain, they’d tear down the wallpaper, and perhaps even call a builder to replace the wood, depending on how deeply the mold penetrated. Ezra stood and watched the servant clean it, his hands on his hips. He frowned, calculating how long the mold had lived there by its life cycle as described in the scientific journals—at least as long as the McPhees had lived in the house, and probably much longer. 

A thorough sweep of the house revealed exactly fourteen more patches of mold, ranging in size from a ha'penny to a dinner plate. Each was to be documented, dated, scoured away, cleansed, destroyed. When Ezra reported his findings, Charles McPhee clapped a large hand on his back and thanked him exactly six times. Charles walked around the house for the rest of the day, watching the clean-up effort and cursing the previous owners and the estate caretaker for ignoring the mold. After lunch, he swore he’d write angry letters to the responsible parties, and a letter to his lawyer inquiring about his legal options.

But something still festered in the pit of Ezra’s stomach that night, while he sat recording their progress in his little leather notebook. He scribbled the words black mold and he felt eyes on the back of his neck, though he was alone in his borrowed bedroom. He wrote the words source of ailment and he felt sick. Nausea churned and he lurched, then bent forward and pressed his forehead to the cool surface of the writing desk. It reminded Ezra of that cold, wet cloth his mother laid on his forehead all those years ago. He smelled brewed yarrow root tea.

Had anyone made tea for Theodosia tonight? Did Anna hold her when her body ached, cooing soft words into the skin of her shoulder? Or was she alone in that too-big bed right now, missing her mother like he was missing his? Ezra picked his head up off the desk, even though his stomach still quaked. He stood and slipped out of the room.

Ezra found Theodosia just where he predicted she’d be, propped against a small hill of pillows. Her entire body was shrouded with blankets, save for the hand she used to turn the pages of her book. Ezra forced himself to look around, to notice the books on the shelves, the art on the walls—the details he did not want to forget. He took in the portrait above her bed, thinking it might be the heiress herself before realizing the woman on the canvas was older, with greying hair and thin lines framing her elegant features. Her eyes were large, green, and solemn, as if the painter had tried to capture some inner contentment that she possessed but rarely flaunted. Her lips were pressed straight, but she was not stern or matronly. Somehow, there was a warmth about her, even as she overlooked the room, immortalized in oil. 

A small bronze label on the bottom of the frame read Elizabeth Claire McPhee. Theodosia’s mother. 

Theodosia looked up at Ezra, a thin smile spreading over her face. It looked, to Ezra, like a ragged tear through fine silk.

“Hello, Dr. Lockhart,” she said, her shoulders heaving slightly as she spoke. 

“Hello, Theodosia. How do you feel?” 

She closed her book, rubbing her fingers softly over the silver petunia embossed on its cover. Theodosia looked at him with her large mossy eyes, so full of something that Ezra could not place, and again he felt as if she could see into the depths of him, all the way to his very soul. 

“Truthfully, sir, I am dreadfully tired,” she said. “My body aches to my bones, and it seems as though everything exhausts me, even just to stand or walk a few steps… But I see you have found the cause of my ailment, and for that I am grateful.” 

Theodosia pointed to the spot in the corner, where a square of wallpaper had been carefully cut and peeled away. Sitting on the floor below the incision was a writing desk, scattered with papers and quills and ink pots. A thick dictionary sat propped on a bookstand, open and ready to be referenced. Ezra nodded, but as his eyes flickered between the writing desk and the missing wallpaper, he only felt a little more nauseated.

“Yes, well… With continued treatment, I am sure you will feel better soon, Theodosia,” he said. “It does concern me, though, that you are so fatigued.”

“I do not sleep restfully, sir. I have the strangest dreams.”

Ezra sat in the chair next to her bed, then offered her his hand. She glanced at his palm, then his eyes, then placed her hand in his. It was like ice.

“Please,” he said, “tell me about your dreams.” 

Theodosia looked into him a bit longer, then nodded, and cast her eyes at the floor. A thin line creased her forehead.

“It is always the same,” she said. “I am in a beautiful garden, sitting on a stone bench, enjoying the sun and the flowers. A woman in a lovely dress comes and sits next to me, but I cannot see her face. She has a large parasol, you see, and it obscures her. But somehow, even though I cannot see, I know she is beautiful, with dark hair and ivory skin. Then, she speaks to me, and her voice is terrible.”

“What does it sound like?”

“Oh, sir, it is horrendous. Like iron screeching on iron. It grates upon my ears to remember it… She tells me not to be afraid, she will not hurt me. Before she can tell me anything else, I know she is there to tell me something very important, although I cannot say how I know this. She begins to deliver the message, but as she turns, her parasol moves, and I see that her face is not a face at all, but a fleshless skull. Before she speaks, I scream, and then I wake up.”

Ezra felt Theodosia’s hand tremble in his, and her forehead creased a bit deeper. He held her hand a little tighter, saying nothing, only watching her and feeling his lungs go empty. 

“I am scared to die, sir,” she said, her voice cracking. Her eyes welled with tears.

“You’re not going to die, Theodosia,” Ezra told her. “Not while I am here.”

Theodosia opened her mouth to reply, but tears overflowed from her eyes, and only a sob escaped her lips. She crumpled, pulling her knees close to her chest and pressing her face into the quilt. Ezra wanted nothing more than to climb onto the bed next to her, wrap her in his arms, and hold her. He wanted to tell her that everything would turn out fine, that she would get better, that she would not die from this strange affliction. But he could not. In school, his instructors had taught against such things. He was a doctor, they said. A man of science. When patients succumb to their emotions, it was his duty to remain calm and rational. To be the voice of reason. It was expected of him. 

Ezra sat and held her hand as tight as he could without hurting her. He waited. He did not know how long it was, but he did not leave Theodosia’s side until she exhausted herself and fell asleep, her eyes puffy and her cheeks streaked with tears.

Hours later, as Ezra neared the end of his notes for the evening, a strange, quiet sound filled his bedroom. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

He dotted the period at the end of his sentence and glanced up. Outside, a gale wind whipped through the trees, forcing a branch against the glass of his window pane. Ezra set down his pen and walked to the glass, looking out at the landscape. From this side of the house, it seemed the hills rolled on forever. The moon was high, illuminating everything under a silvery glow. The leaves and blades of grass looked made of pewter as they shone, dancing like puppets against the night sky.

Suddenly, as he looked out into the fields, the wind picked up even more, and the tapping against his window became slamming, and the swaying of the trees became frantic shaking. Ezra took a half-step back, startled. The storm was getting violent, but where was the rain? There had been no thunder or lightning to announce the gale. His eyes darted around the sky, looking for the clouds, but all was clear. He could see every star as perfectly as if through a telescope.

And then, Ezra’s eyes fell upon a lone figure standing in the field—a small, gnarled crone dressed in grey rags. Her hair was red as smoldering coals, even in the moonlight, and it whipped around her face like a tongue of flame. Ezra froze. The coldest chill he’d ever felt wormed its way up his spine, urging his limbs to move, begging his eyes to blink or his mouth to yell, but he could not. A sensation more terrible than terror filled him, and he could not look away. In that moment, as the wind gusted and the trees shook, he saw nothing but her, standing there in the field, barefoot. 

Before his unwilling eyes, the woman opened her mouth and screamed. And suddenly, Ezra was fourteen and thirty-eight all at once, standing at the window of his dormitory and his bedroom at Wildmoore Estate, eyes fixed upon this woman, this harbinger, and the same terrible, bloodcurdling screech filled his ears. It echoed in his head, a bell that never stops tolling, and his body yet begged him to flee, to start running and never stop and never look back. But he was frozen, just as he was as a boy at boarding school, just as he and his mother had been when his father came home, just as Theodosia and Charles were now. He felt a tear roll down his face, but he could do nothing to stop it.

And suddenly, the wind died down, and the woman was gone, and the screaming inside of Ezra’s mind ceased, and he was back inside himself, crying and gasping for air. He crumpled to his knees, hands grasping desperately at his chest and his temples. There were a few moments of stillness, where nothing moved and nothing happened, where there was no sound but  his own silent sobs.

Then, from somewhere far away inside the house, another cry rang out—a woman’s terrible wailing, echoing through the hallways like another dirge in the wind. Ezra heard doors slam and boots rush across stone, but all of it was overpowered by the screaming, the pain-laced torment of a woman in mourning. Ezra knew why. He had known before the wailing began, from the moment he saw the crone in the field. But now, his silent cries became quivering sobs, and he felt the floor come up to meet his cheek as his glasses tumbled off his face. He opened his mouth and wailed, his grief a trembling harmony to the far-off shrieks.

Theodosia McPhee was dead.