"Refresh yourself," she commands. "We will await you in the dining hall."
She closes the door before I can say thank you.
I’m alone.
I exhale a sharp breath that rattles in my chest. My hands are trembling. I clasp them together, forcing the tremors to stop.Regulate. Stabilize.
I turn to inspect the room, and the air jams in my throat.
It’s a museum exhibit of a Victorian nightmare. The four-poster bed is draped in heavy, suffocating lace. But it’s the shelves that make my skin crawl. They line the walls, floor to ceiling, filled with porcelain dolls. Hundreds of them. Their painted faces are cracked with age, their glass eyes staring blankly into the center of the room.
I feel watched.
My anxiety spikes, a red line on a pressure gauge. I need to fix something. I need order.
I drop my bag and move to the rug. It’s slightly askew, not parallel to the floorboards. I kick it into alignment. Better. I move to the desk, straightening a stack of yellowed paper. Then I see the clock on the mantelpiece—a French distinct black marble piece, mid-19th century. It’s silent.
The silence is wrong. A room this dead needs a heartbeat.
I pull my set of winding keys from my pocket—I never travel without them—and find the arbor size that fits. I insert the key. The tactile resistance of the mainspring winding tight sends a wave of relief through me. The tension is stored energy. It makes sense.
Click. Click. Click.
I nudge the pendulum. The clock begins to tick. A steady, rhythmic pulse.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I match my breathing to the beat. In for two ticks. Hold for two. Out for two. The frantic grinding in my head slows down. The dolls are just ceramic and paint. The cold is just poor insulation. Matilde is just an eccentric old woman who doesn't know how to interact with a stranger.
I turn toward the bed to unpack, and that’s when I see it.
Laid out on the brooding floral quilt is a dress. It’s a deep, violent shade of crimson silk, the color of oxygenated blood. It’s beautiful, objectively, but the sight of it makes the hair on the back of my arms stand up.
I walk over and touch the fabric. It’s cool and slippery. I hold it up against me.
It’s my size. Not just "roughly" my size. It’s tailored. The waist is nipped in exactly where I’m narrowest. The bust is precise. The length is cut for my height.
"That doesn't track," I whisper to the empty room.
I never sent them my measurements. I’ve never met these people. Even if they looked at photos from my social media, you can't tailor a garment to this level of precision from a pixelated JPEG. It suggests a level of observation that goes beyond genealogy research. It suggests surveillance.
A chill that has absolutely nothing to do with the air conditioning wraps around my ribs. Why bring me here? Whythe cryptic welcome? Why a dress that looks like it’s been waiting for me for decades?
I need air. Real air, not this recycled, rose-scented preservation fluid they’re pumping through the vents.
I toss the dress back onto the bed, unable to look at it, and cross the room to the tall sash window. The view outside is swallowed by the early winter dusk, the Spanish moss turning into jagged silhouettes against a bruising purple sky.
I undo the latch and shove upward on the frame.
It doesn't budge.
I grunt, putting my weight into it. Old houses swell in the humidity; wood warps. It’s simple physics. I jam the heels of my hands under the sash and push again, straining until my shoulders burn.
Nothing. It feels solid, like part of the wall.
I lean closer, squinting through the grime-streaked glass to see where it’s stuck.
My blood goes cold.
