Page 12 of Lucy Undying

I’d hoped for a set of silver dishes, or a convenient chest full of jewelry. Those hopes seem highly unlikely given the condition of things. I dig through my backpack for an extra shirt and tie it over my nose and mouth. I’ll need more allergy meds just to survive this place. As if my immune system wasn’t already haywire enough, but at least the unseasonably warm fall weather means the house isn’t too chilly. Cold is the true enemy when it comes to my blood.

I wander the main floor, opening what windows I can. Most are sealed shut, and the thick glass gives the light a strange underwater quality. I keep trying to clear my ears, but they’re not the problem. This tomb of a house is. Muffled quiet presses in all around me. Even the wood floors are surprisingly noiseless beneath my feet. It’s not that the house doesn’t want to be disturbed, it’s that it refuses to be disturbed. If there’s a ghost here, it’s me.

Spooked by the thought, I stomp. I clatter and bang and make noise to announce myself. It doesn’t help much, but pretending not to be afraid goes a long way in making me feel brave.

I sing the lyrics of some of my favorite modern poets—the Beastie Boys, memorized in high school to annoy my mother—as I explore a sitting room, a dining room, a library-slash-den, and a kitchen in the back. They’re all unpicked over, perfectly preserved. So much stuff, but none of it is valuable in a gold-or-gems sort of way.

My heart sinks further as I wander. I have no idea what any of this junk might be worth. Maybe nothing. Or maybe that chair with the hand-carved wooden frame is priceless, and the bookshelves are filled with first editions, and I’m sitting on a gold mine. But if I don’t know, how can I figure out what to sell?

The kitchen is bleak, too. The stove is a hulking metal monstrosity, complete with overhanging brick cave. It’s an actual antique. And not an exciting, maybe I can pawn it antique. A frustrating, how can I live here if I can’t figure out how to light the stove without burning the whole place down antique. I’m sure it was the height of luxury at the turn of the century, but it’s the wrong century turn for my immediate needs. I’m a 2000s girl, not a 1900s one. 1800s? I don’t know how old this house is. I check the paperwork, but it’s impossible to decipher. Should have asked for the whole file.

I slump in a sturdy chair at a round wooden table, the only items of furniture in the house that seem welcoming. Maybe because this kitchen was never meant for the inhabitants, only the servants. It feels accessible.

Even though she was American, I picture my girl Emily Dickinson sitting at this table, baking in this kitchen, scribbling poems on the back of cake recipes. It makes it all feel a little more hopeful to me, or at least a little less depressing. Hope is a thing with feathers, but the only thing this kitchen needs feathers for is a good feather duster.

I check my phone, which shows me my other problem as a 2000s girl. Almost no reception. Zero nearby Wi-Fi signals I can mooch off. My sense of being underwater gets even stronger, not helped by the fact that I can barely breathe through my shirt filter.

This whole idea was impulsive. Stupid. Futile, like all my other attempts at escape and independence. My mother reaches out for me from beyond the grave, her fingernails extending into claws, her grasp tightening. Maybe that’s what Dad meant when he called. Even sealed in her coffin, my mother is inescapable.

Another Emily Dickinson poem I carry in my head: The things that never can come back are several—childhood, some forms of hope, the dead…

I repeat it to myself as a litany, but I don’t believe it. Not really. Because I know full well that anything can come back; it just never comes back right.

But I took care of my mother. I’ll take care of this, too. I stand resolutely, leaving my bag on the table. There are a few more doors down here I haven’t checked yet.

Door number one is at the back of the kitchen. It leads to a pitch-dark set of claustrophobic servants’ stairs I immediately vow to never set foot on. They’re a broken neck waiting to happen.

Door number two is a pantry, filled with the detritus of decades gone by. A few empty crates, a disintegrating broom, some alarmingly half-full bottles. Nothing in there worth pawning, unless pawnshops are into generations of bespoke mold. Actually, bespoke, bio-targeted mold sounds like something my mom would sell in her idiotic wellness cult.

There’s a back way out through the kitchen, but the door has swollen so much with age and moisture that I can’t budge it. Probably a fire hazard, but what in this place isn’t?

The last door in the kitchen leads to the hallway that connects the front of the house, the stairs, and the study. There’s a door hidden in the darkness of the hall back here I didn’t notice before.

The knob won’t turn. None of the other interior doors were locked; why is this one? My hope gaining feathers once more, I pull out the littlest key in my key collection. This lock hasn’t been kept in good working order like the others. The knob shrieks as though in pain when I turn it. Like the kitchen exit, age has warped the door. Unlike the kitchen exit, I need this one to open.

I shove my shoulder against the wood, and it bursts loose. My momentum carries me inside. One of the windows is boarded up, air whistling mournfully through the cracks in the planks. A new scent invades my sinuses. It’s a hint of animal musk. Maybe something living has taken up residence here? Or maybe the wolf never left…

Between the boarded-up window and the dirty glass, I can barely see. I sweep my phone’s flashlight over the floor, but there’s no evidence of nests or burrows. Nothing furred, feathered, or fanged. I check the walls, too, just in case. My light catches on the edges of broken glass where windowpanes used to be. Odd that this window wasn’t replaced, since the state of the boards makes it clear the breaking happened ages ago. Maybe there was some weird grain of truth to Rahul’s urban legend.

Satisfied I’m not adding rabies to the list of diseases this house might expose me to, I relax and look around. There’s a delicate vanity with a blackened mirror against the far wall. A brass headboard, dull and tarnished with age, looms over a hastily made bed. I touch the lacy bedspread material and it disintegrates between my fingers. The mattress is sunken in a perfect body shape, like it’s holding someone’s spot, still waiting for them to return. There’s a bench seat beneath the missing window, stacked with a pile of forgotten books so old and moldy they’ve fused into a single entity. Who sat there, looking out at the garden? What did they hope and dream about?

And did they own anything valuable I can easily sell?

I step toward the vanity, crossing my fingers that jewelry got locked in this room. Glass crunches underfoot and I hop away. Despite the thick soles of my trusty Docs, I can’t afford to get cut. I have to keep my promise to Rahul not to be ground zero of a zombie apocalypse.

When I flash my light down to check for more shards, there isn’t any glass. I know I felt it, though. I crouch down and shine the light closer to the dull wooden floorboards. There’s a glimmer of reflection from beneath the floor. The glass I’d stepped on has fallen through, which means a loose plank. I feel around its edges and am rewarded when the whole board wiggles like a tooth ready to be yanked.

“Jackpot,” I whisper. I ease the board up to find a nest. But this is a nest of secrets, and in the center is a carefully wrapped object. Jewelry, I think. Please be jewelry. I do a quick spider check and then reach in and retrieve my bounty. It’s a box, solid, wrapped in oiled cloth to keep out the damp. Whatever’s inside, someone took great care to protect it and to hide it.

Freedom. Freedom’s inside. I carry it back to the kitchen table and set it reverently down. Beneath the cloth is a simple but elegant wooden box, still polished, the metal latch bright. I ease it open.

It’s…a book. I cross my fingers for a first-edition Dickens, or, I don’t know, a handwritten Shakespeare folio. Something. Anything.

Instead, on the inside cover I find loopy cursive handwriting declaring it the property of one Lucy Westenra. It’s a girl’s secret diary. I wasn’t wrong. I found something secret and precious. But also utterly valueless.

A claw scrapes down the window. I stumble up and grab my chair, ready to swing. But it’s just one of the overgrown bushes. Not my mother returned from the grave, laughing at my slaughtered hopes.

“Fuck you, Mom,” I say, shoving the box into the center of the table and getting back to work.

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