When she opened her eyes again, she knew that she was still dreaming. Peering at her intently was Alan McMichael, and he could not be real. He was back in Buffalo… or had he gone to Italy? Why was she thinking that?
Enola Sciotti’s letter, she remembered, and it all came rushing back.
“Hello, Edith,” he said warmly, but in a subdued, professional tone. “Don’t try to talk or move just yet. You are heavily sedated.”
Alan, listen to me, oh, dear God, she thought. But she looked around and realized she was still at Allerdale Hall. Thomas and Lucille stood close together, observing. Two vultures circling carrion. Dear God, what would they do to Alan?
She tried to warn him, but it was just too much to manage. His face blurred in and out of focus; was he a ghost already?
“It’s a shock seeing me, I warrant,” he said to her. Then he turned to Lucille and Thomas. “Forgive me for dropping in unannounced.”
Lucille simpered, the very picture of a worried sister-in-law. “Heaven-sent, as it turns out.”
“I arrived in Southampton yesterday. I should have sent a wire.” His smile took in all three of them. “But I thought you’d enjoy the surprise.”
Tell him, tell him, she ordered herself, flailing at him. But she was drifting in and out of awareness. Part of her was back with him in their pirate lair in his back yard, and she was trying to tell him about Enola Sciotti. And Eunice was there, laughing at her.
No, not Eunice.
Lucille.
“We’d have been at a loss. It’s a miracle,” Lucille told Alan. “She’s been sick. Delirious.”
Edith looked down. Her left leg was bandaged and braced. Alan must have done it.
“She spoke to me—” she began.
“Who spoke to you?” Alan asked gently.
“My mother was delivering a warning.” She had to make him understand. “Crimson Peak—”
As she reached toward him, he dropped his gaze toward her hand. She followed his line of vision: It was her ring finger, red and swollen, from where Lucille had torn off the ring.
“Delirious, you see?” Lucille murmured. “Poor thing.”
Alan looked at Lucille.
She is wearing the ring. See the ring, Edith begged him. But even if he did, it wouldn’t mean anything to him. He had probably never noticed it on her hand, although she had begun wearing it the second that Thomas proposed. Men didn’t see things like that.
Tears of fear and frustration rolled down her cheeks, but deep gratitude rushed through her as well. Alan had relinquished his work, crossed the sea, and searched her out in the stormy moors of England to save her life, at grave risk of his own. She had not understood his true mettle or the depth of his feeling until now, and she felt deep remorse for not allowing herself to see it before. It had been there all along, like the air around her and the ground underfoot. Because of her blindness, Alan was like her, a butterfly for these two dark moths to devour. If he discovered what was going on, they would kill him. If they convinced him to leave her with them, they would kill her.
“Here, drink.” He held a cup of tea to her lips. The cup.
“No, no, no, please, no!” she cried, batting at it. She felt herself fainting. She was going to die. And he, too.
Alan…
* * *
Edith’s “sister-in-law” put on every air of the utmost concern as Edith slipped back into unconsciousness. Alan made a show of putting away his equipment as he pondered his next move.
“I’m only sorry that you have to see her like this,” Lucille said. “Really, for all her city upbringing, she’s taken to life here in the hills.” She paused and then she said, “You will stay here, with us? Wait for the storm to pass.”
“If you insist,” Alan said, although etiquette demanded that he make at least a token refusal. This was certainly no time to stand on ceremony. “But then…” When she raised her brows, he knew he must not reveal that he had a terrible suspicion that Edith’s fall had been engineered. Did they actually mean that she had plummeted from the topmost floor? It was a miracle that she was still alive. He, too, for that matter, if his suspicions were correct. “…I’ll need a moment alone with my patient,” he finished.
Lucille paled and Sir Thomas nervously came forward. His apprehension and culpability were written all over his face. It took everything in Alan not to strike him.
“I beg your pardon?” Sharpe said.
“Would you mind?” Alan asked in a friendly, innocent tone. “Just a moment more. We must all do our best to see her through this.”
Lucille pulled Sharpe by the sleeve. “We’ll leave you then, Dr. McMichael,” she said. “With your patient.”
* * *
Once out of sight of Dr. McMichael, Lucille was relentless, taking the stairs so quickly she skipped half of them. Thomas followed, near-paralyzed with apprehension. Everything was spiraling out of control. When he had seen Edith fall…
He thanked Providence that the floorboards were rotten, and the viscous, bright clay had softened her landing.
“Where are you going?” he asked her. But he knew where: to the attic. He followed after her, as he always did.
She whirled on him. “Somebody has to stop him. I just want to know, brother. Is it going to be you this time? Or me, as usual?”
His face fell. He couldn’t even name all the emotions that were swirling through him—shame, horror, bewilderment. Reaching her room, she rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a familiar-looking knife. He recoiled, and she huffed.
“Thought so,” she snapped.
* * *
Alan knew that Edith was almost out of time. He touched her cheek, concerned by how clammy it was. His mind raced, working out various scenarios to get her out of here as fast as possible. These people must own horses. Could he get her to the stables? Would he have time to hitch a horse to a carriage or a wagon? How far would they go to stop him?
They will do whatever it takes, he thought.
Edith roused slightly. That was good. If she could help him make their escape, so much the better.
“Edith, listen to me. I am here to take you away. You hear me? I am going to take you with me now.”
She gazed into his eyes, but he wasn’t certain she was able to understand him. He checked her pupils and then her pulse, and saw her fighting to regain mastery of herself.
“Help. Help me,” she said, gasping. She grew frantic. “They are monsters. Both of them. Alan. Somebody has to stop them.”
He tried to keep her calm. “Shh, shh, I know. I know. I will not let them harm you any further, you hear? We are leaving.”
He took her by the arm. “You have signs of poisoning. You’re weakened. So you have to show me you can stand up.”
Suddenly a little dog at her feet barked, startling him out of his wits. He shushed it, realizing that the Sharpes must have heard it. Time was up.
They began to walk, but she was swaying, stumbling.
“Keep quiet,” he cautioned her. “We’ll be out in no time.”
She lurched forward; it was no good, so he lifted her into his arms and carried her down to the foyer. She cried on his shoulder, clinging to him. Dear God, he had gotten here just in time. If he had been too late… He looked down at her, their faces inches apart, the kiss he had dreamed of his entire life within his reach.
“Things are getting a bit emotional, I see, Doctor,” Lucille Sharpe said from her vantage point on the staircase. Her brother was with her, but Alan saw at once that it was the sister he had to fear.
He raised his guard and assumed a more authoritative demeanor—a doctor and friend concerned for his patient. “She’s exhausted, showing signs of anemia. I’m going to take her to a hospital immediately.”
She advanced like a wild animal stalking prey. He reminded himself that she was very dangerous.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said coolly. Thomas Sharpe followed her, his gaze on Edith.
Alan stared at her
for a moment, weighing his options. This woman was not interested in playing cat and mouse. Very well, then.
“It is. You’ve been poisoning her. I know everything.”
He set Edith down and pulled out his folder of newspaper clippings. He showed the brother and sister the gruesome drawing that Holly had shown him: a butchered woman lying in a tub, her head hacked open. “I’m sure you remember this. Front page, the Cumberland Ledger. Lady Beatrice Sharpe was murdered in the bathtub. One brutal blow, almost split her head in two.”
He gestured to the caption: Shocking Savage Murder at Allerdale Hall.
Edith gaped open-mouthed. Though he was sorry to upset her, perhaps the shock might stir her into action.
“No suspect was ever arrested,” Alan said. “There was no one else in the house, only the children. The truth was too horrible to consider.”
Edith stared at Sir Thomas as if she had never seen him before in her life. And Alan suspected that she never had seen him. Not the real him.
“You?” she said to the man. The monster. “You did this?”
The man stood awash in self-disgust and desolation. “Stop it, please!”
“You, Sir Thomas, were only twelve at the time. After questioning by the police, you were sent to boarding school.” Alan looked at his sister. “As for Lucille, at fourteen, her story is less clear. A convent education in Switzerland, the news account says. But I suspect a different sort of institution.”
Lucille glared at her brother, who was in a paroxysm of despair. She narrowed her eyes. “What are you waiting for?”
“Sir Thomas is married, Edith. Your father obtained a copy of the certificate. But he couldn’t bear to show it to you. He married Pamela Upton—”
“And Enola Sciotti—E.S.,” Edith cut in, ice-cold, her chest heaving. “And Margaret McDermott. He married all three, and got their money.”
“Edith—” Sir Thomas begged. But for what? Alan wondered. Forgiveness as she left him? Or absolution because he would never let her go?
Boldly, Alan took Edith’s hand and walked away from the Sharpes. He was resolute, although finely trembling, aware of the intense peril they were both in.
“Edith and I are leaving,” he announced, and he threw open the door.
The snowdrifts were mountainous, and Edith wore only her nightgown. But better to face the elements out there than sure death in here. He took one step—
—and Lucille darted forward, stabbing him in the armpit. The pain blazed like a branding iron. Edith screamed, falling away from him, and he arched backwards, the knife jutting out. He flailed at it, staggering forward, realizing too late that Edith was not beside him.
Then he saw a flash of white as Edith attempted to catch up. He heard a crash and half-turned; Lucille had thrown the groggy Edith against the wall.
No! he protested, but he was unable to speak. He could only gasp. The knife point, he feared, had nicked the upper lobe of his lung.
He could not leave Edith at their mercy. They would set upon her like rabid dogs and rip her apart. He struggled against his failing body. He was bleeding profusely and knew he was going into shock. His pulse was rapid, his breathing shallow, and he was getting light-headed. Edith was crying, shouting his name but she sounded as if she were very far away, or speaking to him from underwater.
He had to do something to save her. But the pain was excruciating, and he could barely think. As he lurched onto the ice-coated doorstep, he ordered himself not to pull the knife out. If an artery had been cut, the pressure of the metal might be tamping the blood flow. If removed, he might bleed to death.
Don’t do it, don’t, he thought, but he couldn’t stop himself. He drew out the knife. As he had feared it would, blood gushed from the wound onto the stairs. So much, so much; he lost his balance and fell, hard. The knife bounced off the stone. He didn’t hear it clatter.
All he could hear was Edith screaming his name.
And all he could see was the murderess bearing down on him in the center of an inferno of crimson snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IT WATCHED AS the sister rushed the hero. It breathed in the hatred, the fear and madness; her soul was as poisoned as the bride’s body.
Perhaps Allerdale Hall had been a happy house, filled with fat children and prosperous parents. It did not remember such times, and its madness doubled, tripled at the thought that such joys had once filled these walls, to be replaced by torment.
It breathed out the clay, the crimson clay, and the ring expanded out into the snow. Let them all drown in it, and walk the floors forever with the murdered wives and the mother and the child, with the sins of the Sharpes sucking the life out of the land, out of each other, parasites.
Black moths feeding on carrion and butterflies.
The death’s-head carnivore was stalking the hero, each step a toll of his funeral bell.
* * *
As Alan rolled over, Lucille calmly picked up the knife. Thomas trailed behind her, and so did Edith’s little dog, yipping with excitement. Alan scrambled backwards, understanding at some level that he was probably dying, that he would surely die if he did not flee, but that nothing in the world could compel him to abandon Edith.
But instead of finishing him off, Lucille held Edith down and handed the knife to Thomas.
“You can do this!” she shouted at him. “Get your hands dirty!”
Alan yelled, “No, Edith can’t die here!” He had seen Sharpe’s tortured look, understood that the madman did love Edith. That was the only weapon Alan wielded at the moment—an appeal to whatever shard of a soul Sharpe still possessed to spare the woman he loved.
Numb, Sharpe stared at the knife in his hand, and Alan dared to hope that he had gotten through to him.
“You’ve never done anything for us,” his sister spat at him in disgust. “Look at you!”
“Edith’s stronger than both of you,” Alan said. “She can’t die here.”
In a rage, Lucille pushed Sharpe forward, toward Alan. Changing targets, then, from Edith to him. Good. So be it.
“Do it!” Lucille shrieked.
Alan readied himself, regretting with all his heart that he could not do more for Edith. Wondering if, because he loved her, by some miracle he would be able to save her from beyond the grave.
Sharpe was grim-faced, dirty, and bloody as he approached Alan. Gone was the dapper fortune-hunter, perhaps as much a victim in all of this as the mother his sister had slaughtered. He stank of fear.
“She will not stop,” Sharpe whispered to Alan. “Her will is so much stronger than my own. I am so sorry. I will have to do this.”
Shielding his actions from his sister, who stood at some distance behind him, Sharpe closed in on Alan, and to Alan’s astonishment, discreetly encouraged Alan to guide the knife.
“But you are a doctor,” Sharpe added. He took a breath. “Show me where.”
Where to stab me so that it is not fatal, Alan translated. Sparing me. He will spare Edith too, if he can.
So he, Alan, must live. But he couldn’t think straight. He was one giant sinking throb of agony, withering inside.
Sharpe was wrapping Alan’s hand around the hilt. This was the apotheosis of their duel at Cushing’s funeral: on the black day, he and Sharpe staring down one another, Alan quitting the field with a tip of his hat. Today their positions were reversed. Sharpe had surrendered everything. If only he would dare to turn that knife on his sister… but he wasn’t man enough for that. This was the best Sir Thomas could do.
As he swayed, Alan pictured the inside of his abdominal cavity. The bowel, the intestines, the appendix…
There. Right there. That will inflict the least amount of damage.
He eased Sir Thomas’s willing hand a few inches to the right, locked eyes with Sharpe, and nodded once, nearly imperceptibly.
The regret in Sharpe’s eyes was palpable.
And then Sharpe sank the knife in.
* * *
The
dog yipped frantically as the hero doubled over and collapsed. The bride fell, sobbing, as the brother turned away from his bloody deed, averting his gaze.
“You are monsters! You both are!” the bride cried.
The sister almost chuckled. “Funny. That’s the last thing Mother said, too.”
The last.
The last of the Sharpes.
It was coming to an end.
The house bled a river of blood, a filling gulley to drown the hapless creatures as they flailed out their last moments in the snow. It had no foundation; it was sinking, yes, down into the pit, gleeful and furious and busy. And as mad as the Sharpes themselves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FINALLY.
Pride, relief, joy. Her brother, her beloved, her soul mate had torn his way out of his cocoon. Through the cut he had sliced in McMichael’s body, he had emerged a beautiful, black-winged moth. Her heart was soaring as the interfering American collapsed to the ground, blood gushing everywhere. Thomas had come into his own—at last, at last.
For years and years, she had borne the burden, performing every necessary task to safeguard them. She had to accept the blame for spoiling and shielding him, which made this moment all the sweeter for her. McMichael had come here to save Edith, and Lucille had goaded Thomas into killing him in front of her, an act that was guaranteed to destroy any affection that Edith had left for Thomas. The stupid little bitch was a witness to the murder and she was now utterly alone. Lucille had no doubt that Edith Cushing would never leave Allerdale Hall alive.
Edith knew it, too. Dazed as she was, it had been easy for Lucille to restrain her and drag her into her room. She was in there now, wringing her hands like some princess in a fairy tale.
Lucille would never have let such a thing happen to her.
Barely able to restrain her high spirits, she watched Thomas drag the dead doctor into the elevator. Look how sure he was of himself! Gone was her “doubting Thomas;” in his place was a man. It was all ending so perfectly. There would be no need for other women once Edith had signed the papers that transferred her entire fortune to Thomas. And she would sign.