The most tender parts of me were sore, aching, in the most wonderful way. When he curled his large body around me and held me until we fell asleep, I felt certain that if I died then, I would die the happiest I had ever been, or ever would be again.
I could have only been asleep for an hour or so. The moon was still present in the sky, fading like a round scuff of white chalk among the deep blue. I got up from the bed and sensed immediately that something was wrong. A strange humming sound surrounded me, as if the house was alive and rumbling with some anticipation. I glanced at the bed to wake Nick, but he was gone, the bedding rumpled and abandoned on his side.
Then came a knocking. Slow, deliberate. The woodpecker once more, drawing my mind back to Heather House and all its ills, all its secrets.
My hands began to shake as my eyes drifted to the voiles hanging over the terrace doors, seeking to look through them and spot the woodpecker high in a tree. An uneasiness came over me; a bitter taste hanging in my mouth, souring, tasting something rotten. Bringing a hand to my mouth, I screamed. My fingers were gnarled like the limbs of a tree, the knuckles swollen, the skin papery thin. Thick veins threaded the backs of my hands like worms.
I’d know them anywhere. They were my mother’s hands.
Flying to the mirror, I screamed all the louder, cupping the familiar hands that were not mine over my wide, gaping mouth. My mother, with her wisps of long white hair, her wasted body barely holding up the long white nightdress she had died in, gaped back at me.
As if from a sudden punch to the gut, I was winded, incapable of even releasing the tiniest of screams.
My mother’s reflection lowered her hands from her face independently, no longer mirroring me.
Her eyes were dark, tormented, turning red at the edges as blood collected. Her sallow skin took on a purple hue, as if some invisible thing suffocated her. A vein bulged in her temple. Suddenly she lurched forward, vomiting loudly, a red and black pulp gushing from her open mouth. It splattered the floor within the mirror world while I watched in horror from my side.
When she looked up, pleading desperately with her pained expression, her hands raised and stainedwith the deep red, I saw it. Hundreds of tiny yellow pips. A sliver of deep purple skin, like a piece of leather, oozed from her mouth and dropped down her night dress.
The foul smell hit me first, repulsing me. I staggered backwards.
She was vomiting the pulp of rancid figs.
My mother held out her hands, palm-side up, as if to beg for change, but it was too late for her. I turned and ran from my room, throwing the door open, escaping down the mahogany staircase. I screamed for Nick, wailing his name, but he wouldn’t come to me this time.
I could hear her behind me. I flew through the house, out of the back door, down the stone steps into the garden.
Birds chirped. The morning clouds held their breath. The woodpecker continued its slow, incessant knocking.
The orangery came into view. The fig tree hunched against the glass. I wanted to tear it down, uproot it with my bare hands if I had to. Pausing to catch my breath against the stone basin of the fountain, I dared a glance back up towards my bedroom. Mother was there, on the balcony, vomiting black pulp. She moaned my name into the night and I ran, fleeing into the orangery.
My father was there, on the ground, his body bloated and stained the same deep red of the rotting figs. Mother appeared over him, sobbing, holding his head in her lap. Maggots collected at the corners of father’s mouth, his eyes, just as they had in Heather House.
A sharp pain split open my head. Louisa’s statue paid no mind, shunning me. As I wrapped my arms around my head, grimacing at the pain, a high pitched ringing drowned out my mother’s wailing voice. The first thudscame, then more, as they fell.
Rotting figs, dropping all around us. They rained down from the glass ceiling, hitting the tiles with a thump like parcels of wet sand.
I hid in my forearms, crossing them over my face to blot it all out.
The ringing exploded in my ears, turning white behind my eyelids.
And then came silence.
I woke at the bottom of the fig tree, the blackened leaves curling around my limbs as I lay against the cold, cracked tiles of the orangery floor. Nick’s voice came, then, calling for me. I could hear birds singing, and saw the pale morning light pouring in. The creaking of the door told me that Nick had found me. As he hurried toward me, wearing only a black T-shirt and a pair of black jogging bottoms, I allowed my eyes to roam. There was no sign of them; not my mother, not my father’s corpse, not even the figs.
Nick gathered me up and held me against his chest, warming my shivering body.
“What the hell are you doing here, Grace? I thought for one horrible minute that you’d left Crowthorne House for good. That you’d run away from me,” he said into my hair, kissing the crown of my head repeatedly. “You’re colder than stone.”
“You weren’t in the bed,” I said, my voice breaking as I shivered. “You left me alone with her.”
Nick flinched. I felt him, his muscles stiffening suddenly as he held his breath.
“Alone with who, Grace?”
“My mother,” I cried, giving way to tears.
Nick seemed to relax just a little, then, and resumed stroking my back, my hair. I wondered who he was expecting me to say. My eyes drifted to Louisa’s statue, resentfully watching the back that was forever turned to me.
