*
There are worms in her mother’s eyes and weaving through the slack flesh of her cheeks. The rasp of breath over the desiccated lips, fetid and damp air against Odette’s cheek. Living-dead. Dead-living.
Her mother in her bed. Her mother dead. Her mother murdered.
From one breath to the next, Odette wakes.
For a moment, the dream exists alongside consciousness – a doubling, inner and outer world muddled.
She lies still, tensed like an animal scenting the hunter, listening to the subtle shifting of the room, the hush of the wind against the window frame, the soft hiss of the banked fire, the wood settling, groaning.
There is someone outside her door.
She is sure of it.
The door is flat and large and closed flush. She cannot see anything, cannot hear anyone, but she knows it in the same way that she knows the moment before rain begins to fall or—
Someone is waiting for her.
She did not know before what it meant to be frozen with fear. She thought it a turn of phrase, but now she understands that it is all too literal. Her body is rigid and beyond her control.
Seconds draw out like hours. The rush of her blood in her ears. The frantic thump of her heart.
The church bell strikes three beyond the window, and the moment breaks. The dream subsides, and the hush of the night-world grows human: the rattle of distant carriages, the maid turning over in her bed, the squeak of springs, a mouse in the walls.
Odette curls into herself, wrapping her arms around her knees. She cannot take her eyes from the door.
It is unbearable to be here in this house. To not know if what she saw was real. If what her mother’s ghost told her is true. She must know or surely lose her wits.
More than anything, she wishes she were not alone in this.
It is her own fault for pushing Cecilia away, but it seems impossible to do anything else. How can she tell her the truth? She could not survive it if Cecilia’s expression changed in distrust, disbelief.
She has no proof of anything.
How can a ghost be proved real?
Wait.
Odette moves at last, slithering from her bedclothes and crouching beside her travelling bag, compact and hunched as though she can conceal herself from watchful eyes. She pulls out an illustrated magazine she read on the train and turns to the pages she skipped over in fear before.
Communing with the Ethers.
Mediums. Séances. Automatic writing.
Perhaps thereissomething she can do to find out.
3
Cecilia
THERE ARE FLOWERS ONPenelope’s dress. It is a fine print, delicate lavender and pinks, with a foaming spill of blossom along the sleeve and across the hip. Cecilia follows the curl of a vine over slender stripes, tracking lily and narcissus and peony.
‘Cecilia?’
Blossom like Blodeuwedd, a girl made from flowers. It sounds peaceful, she thinks, to be a creature of broom and oak and meadowsweet. Of soft petal and perfume.
‘Cecilia, are you listening to me?’ Penelope pinches the inside of her arm.
