Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Tonight, I was sure that someone had played with Bea’s doll after she vanished. Not as roughly as Darcie had played with hers, but it had definitely been handled.
If Bea had left it here, perhaps the caretaker or one of the regular cleaners had found it, taken it home for their children to play with. Could be they’d later realized it might be missed and made the decision to return it before Darcie could notice.
Gently patting the doll’s hair, I decided to put her on the windowsill—facing away from the bed.
I might not be creeped out by Bea’s doll, but that didn’t mean I wanted it staring at me all night.
The outside world was charcoal gray, on the final verge before going pitch-black. Hands on the windowsill, I squinted to make out the view directly beyond my window. Blocky shadows, dark against the encroaching night.
Instinct had me leaning closer to the cold glass of the window—then jolting back.
A cemetery. My room looked out onto a cemetery.
Of course the place would have a cemetery. Where else would the Shepherd family be buried except on their own estate?
“It’s probably stark and lovely in daylight,” I said aloud, and went to pull the curtains closed.
The fabric tore off to lie in a crumpled heap of dusty red at my feet. I coughed, waved a hand in front of my face, then looked at the doll I’d placed on the windowsill.
She stared out at the graveyard.
I should’ve been disturbed, but all I could see was that she, too, now wore a patina of dust. Immediately picking her up, I blew away the debris with gentle puffs of air.
I couldn’t bear not to treat her as Bea had done.
Deciding against the windowsill, I took her to the other end of the room and to the writing table tucked in the corner in front of a long and narrow window. Once again, I placed her so that she was looking away from the bed, but I made sure she wasn’t looking outside.
Instead, she faced an oil painting of a bucolic country scene that looked far too placid to be New Zealand. I was no art critic but I’d bet good money the painting had come from England. Either with Clara Shepherd or due to Blake Shepherd’s desire to clothe his house in the symbols of old wealth.
Doll taken care of, I returned to the window. The curtain rod was still up, but when I picked up the crumpled mass of curtain fabric, I saw that it had literally frayed away. Broken apart like cobwebs. Just old. Wasn’t going to go back up anytime soon. And given the height of the windows, it wasn’t like I could throw a towel over the rod, either.
I’d have to risk the dust of the curtains around the bed. Because the idea of sleeping exposed made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. It might be an old graveyard, and the reasonable part of me might know that there was zero chance of ghouls crawling up the walls to stare at me through the window—but I was afraid of the dark.
Logic wasn’t my strong suit when ink-black chased the light from the world.
Still, though my mouth was dry and my heart thudded, I forced myself to look back out the window one more time . . . because I couldn’t be afraid of the dark. I had to learn to live with it.
I could no longer make out any of the shapes I’d seen earlier. I told myself it was the result of a quick darkfall, the landscape beyond obsidian. But deep within, I knew I should’ve still been able to see vague outlines of the headstones. My world was slowly fading away. Getting smaller and smaller with every day that passed.
* * *
—
After deciding to grab a couple of small logs from the living room and leave the tea for later, I spent an hour in the bath. Peaceful—after I’d gotten past the filling stage, which had involved clanking pipes, odd gurgles, and a bonus banging sound to boot.
Pipes in the place liked to make an impression.
As Darcie had promised, it was an old claw-foot thing, the fittings rustic bronze with patches gone a rough antique green. The cleaners had polished them, but no amount of shining would return them to their original glory—but that was part of the charm for me. I’d always been fascinated by aged things, objects and people with history.
“It’s because you’re adopted,” an ex–school friend had opined. “You’re obsessed with history because you don’t have any.”
There was a reason that person was an ex-friend. That didn’t mean they hadn’t been partially right. Only partially. Because I’d never felt any longing for my birth family, didn’t even to this day. I’d thought maybe I was just weird in that, but a little research online and I’d realized that no, there were others like me.