Mrs. Foster had laid out a fresh dress in the washroom for Jane. It was threadbare and its pink color was faded. It smelled like dust and sadness. Its puffed sleeves were loose around the shoulders and its too-short skirt exposed the ankles of the boots Jane stuffed her feet into. Mud still caked them, but was that not what a hearty set of boots was for? Still, Jane curled her lip at the mud. She hated having her things stained, just as she hated to go a day without her face powdered, lips painted, and eyes lined. Even her hair already began to adopt a bristling untidiness, with dark-colored tresses pointing every which way without her rose oil tincture to tame them. On her chin was a ruddy blemish and beneath her eyes were bags bruised by exhaustion, and it made her skin itch to not havesuch imperfections covered. She felt dirty, naked, exposed, as she trodded her way downstairs with her too-short dress, too-dirty boots, and too-bare face.
Jane found Mrs. Foster and Ms. Hudson chittering in the sitting room. They both fell silent when a floorboard creaked beneath Jane’s step.
With the stuffy silence that hung between the three of them as Jane pulled her arms into her coat, she knew they, too, were aware of the scarred wood.
“Rest well, Miss Sterling?” Mrs. Foster asked in a hitched chirp. She wore a taut smile.
What are those scratch marks? What was that thing at my door? Why did you do nothing to wake me?The questions were at the tip of Jane’s tongue, but they remained caged behind her teeth.
Neither of them bothered to wake her to inform her of the scratches or ask if she was all right. Neither of them brought up the marks with their words, but the creases at the corners of their mouths told her enough. They knew.
If they were playing coy now, she doubted they’d answer her questions.
She summoned her own tight smile. “Fine,” was all she said before she put her head down and hurried outside.
The rain had stopped but it didn’t take her walking far from the front door to see, even through the heavy fog, that the marshes were flooded. Almost to the point where the knoll upon which the Drowning House was situated had become its own little island. Only the back half of the carriage from the night before rose from the water a yard or two from the newly made shoreline, a sunken corpse.
She roamed the perimeter of the new ‘island,’ walking as close to the water as she could before mud tried sucking herdown. She sank to nearly her knee with one step, muttering a curse under her breath. When she poised to free herself, balance was lost and she slipped. Her hands braced outward to stop her fall. Mud splattered across her cheek with a wetsmack. The muck was seeping into her every pore and crevice, beneath her nails and between her toes, and she groaned.
“Damn mud and dirt and grime and—” she snarled, but stopped as words caught in her mouth. Her one hand, swallowed past the wrist, had landed right in the center of a massive print, one with four toes and the indentations of four claws that mud seemed to undulate around. A shape like that of a paw, monstrous and large.
Mud gave a starved slurp as she pulled her hand free. She looked further down the waterline where there was another track. And then another, and another, until a trail ran along the water’s edge.
The tracks were distinctly animal, but what kind of animal Jane couldn’t tell, only that it was something large, something with claws.
It was a paw print like that of a wolf’s, she noted, only… strange—it lookedwrong. The space between the toes and metacarpal pads was too far, at least when compared to the tracks of other canids she’d observed on excursions with her father, and she identified the outline of what may have been the heel of a palm.
The track dwarfed the hand she held alongside it, nearly double the size. Recalling the claw marks on the door, she retracted her hand and balled it into a fist. She looked back out over the flooded marshes, wondering where such a thing would have come from—and where it could have gone.
“If not a bear, or a mountain lion, or a wolf…” As she mused aloud, she gnawed her bottom lip between her teeth. “Then what?”
England wasn’t meant to have such beasts, not anymore, either due to the ways of nature or the persecution of man. If it weren’t so damp she’d try to make a plaster mold of the print to bring home with her, maybe bring it to a museum to see what breed of specimen it was, if it were, or ever was, a known living creature. She was at least certain that the creature was mammalian, as she couldn’t find impressions hinting at scales or feathers. Maybe she had just stumbled across a new species of animal, one with claws and a proclivity of scratching at the bedroom doors of young girls.
Did this animal also make a habit of hiding underneath beds and in the depths of wardrobes like some sort of boogeyman?
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt for Jane to check under the bed. That was if she was to spend another night in the Drowning House. As she stared out into the flooded marsh, she begrudgingly accepted that she needed to consider that possibility.
Eager to put distance between herself and the bestial tracks, Jane stepped away from the water and started to trudge up the hill back toward the house. She hugged her arms around her as another breeze howled across the lawn.
Leaves scattered across the grass, having crept from the gray, moldered trees towering along the backside of the property. Requiring a distraction, enrichment, and evidence that could offer her hints at the strange animal’s identity, Jane wandered toward them.
Her steps faltered as she neared the waterlogged border of the forest (if it could even be called such) for hidden in its shadows were several headstones. They were tall and elegant stone carvings, the tallest of which being an angel with its arms and wings stretched upwards whilst the shortest was an angel weeping atop its moss-laden plinth in mournful prayer. Four smaller stones, too thickly layered with rot and lichen to have their names read,surrounded the two main graves in a circular arch. A grim faerie ring, enticing Jane into its center to dance among the dead, just as the creature seemingly did the night before, as more of those monstrous tracks wove between the graves. Had it been a scavenger, seeking its next meal? Were these the tracks of a thing on the hunt or mad with boredom?
Tightening her coat around her, Jane took a step back, away from the meek cemetery. If it weren’t for the very tangible, very savage marks on her bedroom door, she may have joked that the grounds were haunted by the black shuck she’d learned of during her London holiday.
Ravens cawing their throaty incantations drew her attention back to the trees. After a final glance at the graves, making note to ask Terence about them, along with the footprints, she turned to approach the woods.
And she almost wished she just returned to the house instead, for the woods were only a pathetic tangle of brambles, birch trees, and brown-hued despair that never once knew a day of life. Dead leaves and other autumnal debris littered land that steeped into a ravine, which seemed to be full of more muck. She curled her lip at it all. As she peered deeper between the trees and into the ravine, she saw something stark white protruding from the ground, something with the arched shape of what may have been a rib or an antler.
Ravens, one by one, took turns to swoop down and snatch morsels from the forest floor near the jutting growth. She couldn’t see what they were plucking at through the foliage. Their warbles echoed through the trees like witches’ laughter.
Jane wondered if the creature’s den was somewhere in these shallow woods. Beasts and ravens shared a symbiotic relationship, omens of death drawn to one another for nourishment andsurvival. Despite the curiosity that ached in her ribs, she couldn’t bring herself to take a single step into the woods. The trees stood crookedly, challenging her to walk amongst them in search of her mysterious beast. The swirls across their pale bark resembled eyes.
A shout from the house broke the trees’ provoking stare, and Jane turned to see Terence crossing the lawn toward her with a powerful stride.
Several of the birds screamed and took flight upon his approach.
He was well-groomed and wore the heavy scent of cologne, but no amount of shaving and arranging hair could mask the weariness etched into the depths of his face. His eyes were rimmed with red exhaustion as he tried to muster a smile, and his dark tweed coat was draped across his forearm.
