Gallant, page 10
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, and her eyes go to the bruises around his wrists. She knows his dreams are just as vivid as her own, images that taste and feel and sound like truth. Three nights in this house, and already she feels rattled. Judging by the cast of Matthew’s skin, the hollows beneath his eyes, he has dealt with them far longer, and the dreams have been far worse.
There is no rest in sleep. These dreams will be the death of me.
“Don’t hover,” he says, but there’s an invitation in the words, to come in or to go. Olivia drifts forward.
There are only two seats in the room, the bay window and the piano bench, and she cannot bring herself to sit in the window with her back to the garden, so she sits on the edge of the bench, watching his fingers drift over the keys, hands moving with the ease of practice. The song that wafts through the room is soft and winding and lonely. She knows that isn’t the right word, but it is the only one that fits. The notes are lovely, but they make her feel like she is back in the garden shed.
“Do you play?”
Olivia shakes her head no, wonders if he can see the sadness in her face, or the hungry way she looks at the keys. But Matthew isn’t looking at her. He isn’t looking down either. Instead, he keeps his gaze on the window, on the night, on the moon-soaked garden and the distant wall, its edges traced with silver light.
He takes a long, slow breath and says, “My father showed me, when I was young.”
He softens, a ghost of a smile crosses his face, and she does not recognize this Matthew.
He was a kind boy once.
His hands are so gentle on the keys. “My mother loved to hear him play. I wanted to learn, too, but he didn’t know how to teach, couldn’t remember how he had learned himself, so he sat me down one day and nodded at the keys and said, ‘Watch and listen and figure it out.’”
Matthew’s left hand never stops, but his right drifts to the keys right in front of her, plucking out three notes and looping them, over and over.
“Like this,” he says. He withdraws again, and Olivia brings her own hand to the keys.
Something moves behind them, but Matthew doesn’t seem to notice. Olivia looks up at the window, and in the reflection, glimpses the ghoul of an old woman, leaning in the shadow by the door, its face tilted as it listens.
“Go on,” urges Matthew, and she begins to play. She knows it’s not playing so much as making a circle of sound, but it’s something, it’s a start, and she feels herself smiling, caught up in the melody.
“My brother Thomas never got the hang of it,” he says, and Olivia fumbles at the mention of that name. “He couldn’t sit still long enough to learn. But I never thought of it as still. It’s . . . something in you goes quiet, to make room for the song. These days, it feels like the closest thing I ever find to rest.”
Olivia holds her breath, waiting for him to go on, to tell her what happened to Thomas, to explain why he is alone in this too-big house, why he cannot leave, though her mother did, why he spends his nights lashed to a bed, crying out for help.
But he doesn’t say more. The moment passes.
Tomorrow she will find a way to ask these questions, tomorrow she will make him answer, but tonight she lets Matthew play in peace. Tonight the ghoul slips out of the room, and Olivia closes her eyes and lets the melody curl around her, her mind going quiet, to make room for the song. The darkest part of the night passes and thins. Together they keep the music going until dawn.
Chapter Fifteen
For the first time in years, Olivia sleeps late.
She barely remembers returning to her room or climbing back beneath the sheets. She knows only that it was already morning, pale light spilling in through the fog-laced garden and onto the piano as Matthew played. But when she reached her room, the shutters were still drawn, the room still dark, and sleep crashed over her, dragging her down not into dreams, but into sweet, familiar nothing.
When she surfaces again, it’s to the white noise of heavy rain.
Hannah has come through—a pot of tea sits on the ottoman, but there’s no steam, the contents long cold. The shutters are open, but the light outside is a waterlogged gray. The kind of gray that belongs to another world, another life. Her stomach tightens at the sight of it, the memory of gravel hissing beneath her shoes, abandoned flower beds and collapsing sheds and buildings like dull teeth.
Olivia swallows and listens to the storm, some small part of her afraid that Gallant has been nothing but a dream, that she is about to wake and find herself back at Merilance, crouching in the garden shed while rain drums its fingers on the old tin roof.
But then she hears Edgar’s voice on the stairs, calling down to Hannah, and the fear unwinds. She is still here. It is still real.
And yet, just to be safe, Olivia searches her mother’s wardrobe, dresses in the brightest thing she can find, as if the vivid blue of the dress is a defiance, a color that would never be found at Merilance. She is finishing the buttons when she hears it, beyond the window.
It’s low, half-hidden by the steady curtain of rain, but she catches the rasp of tires on gravel, the rumble of an engine.
A car.
Panic lurches through her, and for a brief and terrifying second, she is sure that it has come for her. That she will look out the window and see the same black car that drove her away from Merilance, waiting like a hearse to take her back again. But when she brings herself to look past the fogging glass, down at the fountain and the drive, she sees Edgar jogging out to greet a butcher’s truck, the trade of crates, a wave, and the man is back behind the wheel and pulling away.
Her fluttering pulse begins to settle. Her fingers relax where they were gripping the desk. She retreats, returning to the bed to collect her mother’s journals. She finds the sketchpad among the tangled sheets, tucks all three beneath her arm and heads downstairs.
It is a wretched day outside, but inside, it’s rather pleasant. There is a sleepy air to everything. Wind whistles faintly against the house, rattling the open shutters, and with the sun buried behind so many clouds, it’s hard to tell what time it is. It could be ten in the morning or six at night or anywhere between. Edgar is humming softly in the kitchen, but the low crackle of wood draws her toward the sitting room, where she finds Hannah tucked in a chair, feet propped before the fire, a novel open in her lap.
She has declared it a reading day, she says. Nothing else to do when the weather turns. “My bones are getting old,” she says, “and they don’t like the damp.”
A ghoul sits in the other chair, unnoticed. A young man, little more than an elbow on a knee, a chin in a hand, mimicking Hannah’s posture. Olivia tries to place him from the portrait hall, but there isn’t enough of his face, and when he catches her looking, he dissolves into the velvet cushions. Olivia hugs the journals to her front and slips out, wondering how many ghouls there are at Gallant. One for every gravestone? Do the dead always come home?
Her feet carry her through the house, back to the music room.
Rain falls in a steady sheet beyond the bay window, making the rose heads droop, the distant wall blurred by weather and fog until it looks like an unfinished sketch. She half expects to see Matthew out there, kneeling among the flowers, head bowed despite the rain.
But there’s no sign of him. Perhaps he is still in bed. She thinks of his face the night before, the exhausted slump of his shoulders, the shadows beneath his eyes, and hopes he has found sleep.
The piano sits, waiting, but Olivia resists the urge to sit on the bench again, stumbling across Matthew’s melody, lest it wake him if he’s resting. Instead, she sinks among the cushions on the window bench and spreads out the journals and the sketchpad.
They lie there like pieces in a puzzle, waiting to be solved.
I went beyond the wall, her mother wrote. And I met Death.
I did not tell my brother that the shadow let me go.
And then, I wrote to him last night.
Those words snag something in her. She turns to the first entry in the old green journal, even though the line is burned into her memory.
If you read this, I am safe.
It always struck her as a strange first entry. Now it strikes her as an introduction. She knows the “you” in the journal to be her father, based on the way her mother wrote to him, the way she mourned his loss.
Don’t leave. Please, hold on a little longer. You cannot go before you meet her.
If that’s true, then her father was the “tallest shadow,” the one Grace claims she met beyond the wall. But there is nothing beyond the wall, as far as she can tell, and her father was not a figment of her mother’s mind, a ghostly figure in a fairy tale—Olivia is proof that he was real. He lived and breathed. . . .
And wrote.
Olivia turns through the red journal until she finds the line.
. . . when I checked, I found that he had written back.
She frowns, looking from one journal to the other. She has read the green book a thousand times and found only her mother’s sloping hand, her shifting thoughts. She turns through it again, searching for any sign of her father, and finds only the same entries and illustrations she knows by heart.
Frustration wells inside her, and she flings a cushion across the room.
What were you doing? she thinks, the words directed not at herself, but her mother. What did you mean? Help me understand.
A shadow twitches at the edge of her sight. A curtain of hair, caught in a breeze. A bare foot stepping soundless on the floorboards. Her mother. Olivia doesn’t look up, afraid that if she does, the ghoul will disappear. She resists, even as the shape drifts near. Even as it sinks onto the window seat.
Olivia’s heart thuds loud inside her chest. She has learned to ignore the ghouls or banish them by glaring, but it’s never crossed her mind to call on them. Never occurred to her that they would come.
But her mother’s ghoul sits beside her now, knees curled up beneath its chin, as if summoned. It is so young, and Olivia can’t help but wonder if this is what Grace looked like when she died, or when she left, or younger still, when she first began to dream of freedom—which version of her came home to Gallant?
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the ghoul lean forward as if to study the journals, watches it run a transparent hand almost lovingly over the illustration, ink blooming beneath its fingers. Its gaze—half-there, one side of its face crumbling to shadow—flicks up to Olivia. Its mouth—what’s left of it—opens, as if trying to speak. No sound comes out. But its hand moves back and forth over the illustration.
Olivia studies the page through the veil of her mother’s skin. And then something crackles through her. She reaches for the red journal and turns the pages back to the beginning, scanning the margins for one of the sketches her mother drew. They are so delicate, so precise—and so different from the inky blooms. As if they were not even made by the same hand. Two different styles. Two different artists.
Olivia looks down at the journal she’s had all her life, and at last, she understands.
The words are her mother’s voice.
The drawings are her father’s.
If you read this, I am safe.
I lie awake and wonder why.
Why did you help me? Why do you stay in that place? Are you afraid to leave? Or are you bound to it, as I am bound, each of us prisoners in our house?
But a house like this will never be a home.
I dreamed of you last night. Isn’t that strange? I dreamed that you were standing in the garden, looking up. I dreamed that you were waiting for the sun to rise. It never came.
What do you dream of, I wonder?
Do you even dream at all?
I had a bird once. I kept it in a cage. But one day someone let it go. I was so angry, then, but now I wonder if it was me. If I rose in the night, half-asleep, and slipped the lock and set it free.
Free—a small word for such a magnificent thing.
I don’t know what it feels like, but I want to find out.
If I gave you my hand, would you take it?
If I ran, would you run with me?
Meet me here tomorrow night.
We did it. We did it.
We made it. We are free. And yet—
It doesn’t feel real. I can’t believe that you are sitting next to me, that I can reach out and touch your hand, that I can speak and you will hear. I suppose there is no need to write to you this way now. Perhaps I am writing for myself. It is a habit hard to shake.
I am so happy.
I am so scared.
The two, it turns out, can walk together, hand in hand.
I can’t believe it. But the world is full of stranger things, and I am giddy with the knowing.
What a marvel it is, to feel her heart in time with mine. What a wonder to know that she is there. What will we call her?
Olivia.
Home is a choice.
Something is wrong.
I grow wide, but you grow thinner by the day. I can see you withering. I am afraid tomorrow I will see straight through you. I am afraid the next, you will be gone.
I don’t know how to make you better.
I don’t know how to make you stay.
Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.
I would write the words a thousand times if they’d be strong enough to hold you here.
Don’t leave. Don’t leave. Please, hold on a little longer.
You cannot go before you meet her. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
I slept in your ashes last night.
It was like you laid your shadow down before you left. It smelled like hearth smoke and winter air. I made a blanket of the empty space. I pressed my cheek against the place where yours had been.
When you came apart, I found the cursed bone. It was a molar, of all things, his mouth hiding inside yours. But don’t worry, I ground the tooth to dust and threw the filings on the fire. He will never have the piece that was you. I hope he rots while worrying the hole.
It was never this quiet when you were here. Isn’t that funny? How much sound a body makes. I hate the silence, hate the fact that I’m the only one making noise. I make so much of it, as if I can trick myself into thinking you’re here, just out of sight.
Perhaps you are haunting me.
What a comforting thought.
Maybe it’s you in the darkness.
I swear I’ve seen it move.
The ashes are all gone now. I wish I’d kept the tooth.
Just to have something. At least I have Olivia. She is so quiet. She has your eyes, I think, but when I look at her I wonder if it’s you staring back at me, or him. I hope it is not him but those eyes are so steady, so old for a child’s face and I want to ask her if she knows if she sees if she belongs to that other place, but she is too young to speak.
I hear you in my dreams. Every night when I try to sleep I find myself back at the wall, and there you are, waiting on the other side. You bend your head to mine and whisper and that is how I know it is a lie. His voice in your mouth, telling me to come back, to come back, to come home.
There is no rest in sleep.
These dreams will be the death of me.
I feel like a pane of glass, shot through with cracks and every night the wind is buffeting. The splinters spread, the glass groans under the weight. It will break. I will break. It is only a matter of time and I am so so so tired it is hard to know sometimes I am sure I am awake, only to find myself waking and other times I am certain I’m asleep, only to drift off again. Time skips and my mind wanders and my feet carry me places when I am not looking I blink and I’ve moved the sun has moved the moon is up and Olivia sits there watching and I don’t know how long and I want to rest so I won’t be alone so I can see you I can see you and it makes me want to fall asleep but he always finds me there.
I don’t remember falling asleep but I woke up and I was standing over Olivia whispering her name and I am afraid it wasn’t my hand on her cheek wasn’t my voice in my mouth wasn’t my eyes watching her sleep and
I am so tired I don’t know what to do it isn’t safe but nowhere is safe now I am not here when I’m awake and I am somewhere else asleep I need to close my eyes but the shadows are moving I can see them when I am not looking and I am scared not of them but of me of the voice in the dark of the absence of you I am scared of what I’ll do if I don’t it doesn’t matter I know it can’t go on I can’t go on and I am sorry I wanted to be free sorry I opened the door sorry you’re not here and they are watching he is watching he wants you back but you are gone he wants me but I won’t go he wants her but she is all I have of you and me she is all she is all I want to go home.
Olivia Olivia Olivia
I have been whispering the name into your hair
so you will remember will you remember?
I don’t know I can’t They say there is love in
letting go but I feel only loss. My heart is ash and
did you know ash holds its shape until you touch it
I do not want to leave you but I no longer trust myself
there is no time there is no time there is no time to
I’m so sorry I don’t know what else to do
Olivia, Olivia, Olivia, Remember this—
the shadows cannot touch are not real
the dreams are only dreams can never hurt you
and you will be safe as long as you stay away
