Free The House of Dead Maids by Clare B. Dunkle Page A

pronouncing his
s
’s with great care. “My heathen git isn’t frightened by our ghosts, butthis pious little scrap of yours sees them as awful things that send her running home in terror. What are we to make of this, eh?” He favored me with a scowl. “That your churchgoing has spoiled natural innocence.”
    I might have asked why he saw teeth and fingernails in his specter, but I knew not to argue with my betters.
    “So you see, boy,” he went on to Himself, “you’re missing nothing with religion. Let them keep their guilt and their hell.”
    Himself was listening with interest. “I’ve been to hell,” he said. Mr. Ketch laughed at that and poured another glass, and I felt it my duty to speak.
    “Hell is a fact, and so is guilt, when a person misbehaves,” I said. “It’s shame enough to keep this boy in ignorance. He shouldn’t be lied to as well.”
    “What is the truth, pray? That he should waste his life in humble servitude to others, hoping that a benevolent divinity will reward him? You won’t do it, will you, my boy—you’ll live just as you please.” And he nodded his approval at Himself’s enthusiastic reply.
    “You’ll make a heartless villain of him, sir,” I protested, “with no conscience to teach him kindness. What should happen if you stood betweenhim and what he wanted? Should you counsel him to murder you in your bed?”
    “In an instant!” thundered Mr. Ketch, slamming his fist down on the table. “I want no cowards in this house, no, by hell I don’t. And you would murder me, wouldn’t you, young rogue? I’m sure of it, you rascal. I tell you, there’s comfort in that.”
    “That’s quite enough, Jackie,” said Miss Winter, rising from the table. “They can’t tell when you tease.”
    The conversation raised Mr. Ketch to his old place in my charge’s affections. Himself was fairly overcome with hero-worship. He was still chattering away about it as I undressed him for bed that night.
    “How brave he is!” he said while I scrubbed his neck with a cloth. “Doesn’t mind if I murder him. Glad of it, in fact! I hope I may do murder yet, he’ll be let down if I don’t.”
    “Start tonight,” suggested Mrs. Sexton, to my complete surprise. “Tomorrow’s May Day already. Bah!” she grunted as she untied the bed curtains. “I’ve lived too long to wait on the masters and their maids.”
    “Whatever can you mean?” I demanded, but she picked up the warming pan and left without tucking us into bed.
    “Rogue wants to do murder,” announced Himself, wriggling away from my wet cloth. “Rogue says he’ll murder anyone who washes him.”
    “Rogue can stay nasty and full of pins if he likes,” I retorted, “but I’ll have no dirty feet in this bed. Come back here if you don’t want to sleep on the floor.”
    Izzy did not haunt me that night, but other thoughts haunted me instead. I am no quick study; my thoughts take their time. As I lay in the dark, I remembered again the man in the white shirt, and the presence of the unseen courtyard.
    As I lay there, I swear I could feel the house settle into its proper place around me. Nearly a week’s exploration had taught me its stairways and passages, and I traveled them now in my mind. They had made no sense then; they had twisted upon themselves without meaning until I had learned their secret. Now I saw plainly that the house was not a whole entity, but rather three long, narrow buildings joined at their corners and shaped around an empty core. The barn made up the fourth side of the puzzle box. Seldom House was hollow.
    As soon as I grasped this, I felt the narrow shaft at the center of the house begin to pull on my spirit like a whirlpool. It did not exist as an afterthought.The house existed to surround it. I could feel that empty well tugging at me through the walls that shielded me from it, the black heart of this evil place, the focus of dread and mystery. I fell asleep aware of its presence, and I awoke