Instead I took myself to bed. A storm had blown in and the noise of the thunder was too loud to sleep, so I returned to my room and stayed up until the small hours reading. The volume was one the Witch had lent me: a new English literary magazine with serialised novels. Tonight I was gripped by a story entitledCarmilla.
When the floorboards creaked outside my door I startled so badly I knocked the oil lamp from my bedside table. The glass chimney smashed and the light was snuffed at once. Against the hammering rain, all I could hear was the sound of the metal lamp base rolling away across the floor.
Then the footsteps began to pace.
Had it been the Witch I had seen before? Or did nothing move outside my door at all?
I was afraid, and frustrated at my fear. Was the castle not my home now? Was the Witch not gracious to me? Why, then, did I tremble at the footsteps, harbour doubts about her past?
As quickly as the footsteps came, they passed, and after a moment of deliberation, I left my bed to fetch fresh candles and matches.
I yelped in pain as the soles of my feet met the glass strewn across the floor. Foolish, so foolish. In the dark I could not see where the shards had fallen, and tripped forward, feeling my skin slice open with each step. I sank against the wall by the door and inspected my feet in turn with the tips of my fingers, running them along the arch and curve of my sole to locate each glass fragment and tease it out. Perhaps the dark was a blessing: I could not see the damage I had done.
Limping, I went down to the kitchens where I could find candles, but also water and something to clean my wounds. The castle was not kind at night. An alien, stone world unfit for the living. In pain and fearful of hurting myself more, I moved slowly like a small mammal amongst the grasses, easing myself from shelter to shelter, fearful and twitching. I could not run, injured as I was, and as I descended into the bowels of the castle I had some terrible sense that I was making a mistake.
I had never been to the kitchens after dark and I was quickly lost. There was the last of the water brought up from the well yesterday by the sink, but to clean my feet I would need light and I couldn’t begin to think where the candles were now I was presented by a series of drawers and cupboards. The banked cooking fire glowed malevolently, smouldering logs radiating a shocking warmth in the winter cold.
For goodness’ sake, I was not a child afraid of shadows. I needed candles, matches, to clean my foot and wrap it in something. I could complete this task without fleeing like a coward.
I tried one drawer and then the next and found spoons, reels of twine, table linen, whisks and forks and whetstones. But no candles. No matches. Damn. The kitchen was too vast and my feet hurt with every step. There were a series of rooms set off the kitchen, a silverware store, a larder, a scullery. But tonight there was another open door. I saw my mistake before: I had thought it a cupboard, half buried behind stacks of rusting pans and broken crockery. Now it had all been pushed to one side and the door was open a crack.
I didn’t want to go back to my room a failure, so nudged it wider, hoping for a store room. Instead, I found a large but empty room, and I was struck by the scent of jasmine.
Then I noticed the girl.
Petite and wearing a maid’s uniform, a figure stood in the corner, facing the wall.
The skin at the back of my neck prickled.
‘Hello?’ My voice was a whisper.
The girl didn’t move. I knew I should go to her but I couldn’t make myself move.
The room had a single window showing a stretch of grass and trees painted in navy and black; it was thrown open to the night letting in warm breeze and the rich floral scent of night blooms. Somehow, that was the most sinister thing, the warm rush of summer trapped in the room.
‘Hello?’ I said again. ‘Is everything all right?’
The maid stood in the corner, silent. All I saw was the back of her head in the unnatural moonlight, her arms slack by her side.
I took a step forward.
‘Do you need help?’
I still got no reply, so I took another step and another. Halfway across the room, I couldn’t move any further. The only thing more frightening than the unmoving figure with its back to me was the idea of seeing its face.
Something made a noise behind me, the quiet hush of fabric over stone and I turned.
The Witch stood before me, face hidden by shadow. My breath caught in my throat.
‘Oh!’
I had thought the Witch was someone familiar to me now but suddenly she seemed a stranger in the dark and the quiet. All I could see was the flash of her eyes, glittering.
‘Go to bed, Mina.’ Her voice was cold.
All my confidence fled, and I with it.
My feet left a trail of blood behind me. I did not understand what I had seen, and what the Witch’s role in it was. The only thing I knew for sure was that the Witch was hiding something. I had promised not to pry but I could feel my resolve waning.
