‘The branch didn’t crush us because the Spanish moss caught it.’ I shook my head at the improbability of my own words. ‘It held it up long enough for me to move and push Lydia out the way.’
‘That’s all?’
‘No. There was a woman who appeared out of nowhere to tell me what to do then disappeared when we were safe.’
‘I see. Did Lydia or Jackson speak to this woman?’
I shook my head. There was no one to back up my version of events. I pressed my hand against the scratch on my cheek, relieved to find it was still there, evidence at least that I wasn’t gaslighting myself. Wiping a mixture of rainwater and tearsfrom my face, I heard a sob catch in my throat as more shattered fragments came back to me. Might as well throw all the fuel on the fire at once.
‘Also, it felt like time slowed down,’ I said, searching for any sign that she believed me but my grandmother’s perfectly balanced features were inscrutable. ‘Or maybe I was moving super fast, I’m not sure, but it’s happened before. Once in Lafayette Square and again when the wolf attacked you. This time it lasted longer.’
‘Is that right?’ Catherine said calmly. ‘How very interesting.’
‘It’s not interesting, it’s terrifying,’ I replied, running out of patience. ‘What’s happening? Am I losing my mind?’
She moved to sit beside me on the loveseat and pulled my hand away from my face, the scratch stinging sharply when she pressed one careful finger against it.
‘Emily, I told you on your first day in Savannah, no harm will come to you here. I meant that.’
‘You were wrong,’ I replied. ‘This feels like harm.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘This feels like an awakening.’
She straightened her shoulders, looking as regal as ever but the impassive expression on her face had turned into something else. Pride burned in her emerald eyes, and she smiled, lips curling with admiration.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked, twin tides of panic and confusion rising in me, threatening to roll in and wash me away. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, I swear, I’m normal.’
Catherine clucked with distaste. ‘Normal, indeed. What a terrible thing to say about yourself. You, Emily James Bell are anything but.’
Her chin dipped expectantly and my heart skipped several beats ahead of itself. The whispers in the moss, the appearing-and-disappearing woman, the little girl in the window, the treebranch. I closed my eyes, squeezing them until I saw stars, and released all the other things my mind had hidden away from me until I was ready. Catherine and Ashley talking in the library, the painting of the garden, the living wallpaper. The first Emma Catherine Bell. Everything came rushing back and when I opened my eyes, the trees and vines that decorated the parlour walls twisted and turned, growing and flourishing as they snaked along the floor towards me.
Catherine was right, this wasn’t normal. I wasn’t normal.
‘What about the blackouts?’ I gazed down, transfixed as the vines wended their way over the polished floorboards. ‘And why do I feel so strong one minute but the next I can barely stay up on my feet?’
‘Your body is overwhelmed. Your strength is growing. It’s a lot for you to cope with all at once.’
‘The hallucinations?’
‘Visions. Of the past and, I suspect, the future.’
‘How do you explain the blonde woman? And the little girl I saw in the window of the Benjamin Wilson House?’
This time, her answer rode on a sigh. ‘Oh, Emily, you already know the answer. What else could they be?’
My mouth made the shape of a word but no sound came out.
‘Ghosts,’ I managed to breathe. ‘I can see ghosts.’
‘Honey, you can do much more than that.’
I reached out to meet the encroaching vines as they surged forward, rising upwards when I raised my hand and lowering down when I did the same. This couldn’t be happening, it simply couldn’t.
‘Ghosts aren’t real. They’re just stories made up to scare people. Fairytales. It’s not real history,’ I murmured, a slender trail of ivy wrapping itself lovingly around my ankle.
‘History is written by the victors,’ Catherine said. ‘That’s the saying, isn’t it? But it’s not entirely true. Your so-called“real history” is made up of the stories men wanted people to believe. Sometimes the past lives within us, not written or recorded, but handed down from one generation to the next. Our history is alive.’
The room hummed as she turned delicate circles with her wrist, sending the vines into retreat, back across the floor and up into the wallpaper.
