Page 47 of Lucy Undying

“It really is, isn’t it?”

“I hate it when they chop old houses in half like this. It kills the flow and the soul.” She walks straight through. The kitchen is against the wall between the duplexes, probably to save on plumbing. It’s all chrome and white, a small table crammed in next to the back windows. There’s a family room, too, with stiff couches, a TV with laminated instructions on how to use the remotes, and a shelf with a handful of books doubtless left by previous vacationers. Sure enough, all I see are paperback thrillers and romance. I miss Lucy’s journal.

All along the back of the house are windows that frame the ocean more beautifully than any of my antique gilded frames back at Hillingham. I can forgive the blank canvas of the remodel. The view is the point, anyway.

I follow Elle upstairs and resent the romance novels downstairs, which I’m sure feature the best trope: Oh no, there’s only one bed! There are two main suites here. Elle leaves her stuff in one of the bedrooms and I take the other. There’s nothing remarkable about either. They could be any bedroom anywhere, except for the views. I can see the abbey ruins from here.

“What happened to the abbey?” I shout.

Elle comes in, joining me at the window. “It burned down or something, I think. I don’t know. It was too boring to pay attention to.”

“I thought you were a historian,” I tease.

“Well, I wasn’t when I was a little girl. There’s a graveyard up there, too.”

“Ooh, I love old graveyards!”

Elle gives me a baffled look. “You say that with the excitement of a five-year-old being told they’re visiting the zoo.”

“It’s just so fascinating, right? What we do with our dead says so much about us culturally. What we value. What we fear. So, like, in America we’re not content with merely preying on people while they’re alive by telling them they’re not thin enough, pretty enough, rich enough, healthy enough, safe enough.” My family is evidence of how lucrative that is. “No, we also have this predatory industry around funerals and death. When people are grieving and vulnerable, they’re told that not only should they pick an expensive casket, but they should also pay for an outer casket, so that the thing designed to hold your body and go into the ground is protected from the ground. And you can’t just cremate someone, they have to be in a casket in order to be cremated. Heaven forbid you leave this world without someone being able to cash in on it. And then just burial in general. Why are we filling bodies with chemicals and then sealing them away from the natural processes of decay? They’re dead. Let them go back to the earth that nourished them. Instead, we preserve an already dead body—for what?—and then plant stones above them in a mockery of oh my god, I need to stop talking, don’t I.”

Elle’s dimples betray her smile even if her lips are held perfectly neutral. “No, this is interesting. But don’t you think there’s meaning in remembering the dead?”

“Asks the historian! That’s a trap of a question. Obviously there’s meaning in it. When people die, they become memories. They become stories. And those have value. But their dead bodies? Not so much. But that’s just my opinion. What do you think?”

“Honestly? I find graveyards quite uninspiring.”

“So, you don’t want to do a midnight tour.” Normally I’d be up for one, but today I’m relieved. Last night I was so tired I slept ten hours straight. No moonlight interruptions, but my dreams were restless and upsetting. Nothing but being pursued by shadowy figures. I woke up feeling even worse.

“No, I definitely don’t. I’m going to go for a walk now. You can join, if you want.” The way Elle says it, I suspect she wants some time alone. She probably needs it, too, processing her feelings about Whitby and what happened here.

“Thanks, but I’m going to take the longest, hottest shower in the history of showers, and then I’m going to bed. I know that’s boring.”

“That’s what Whitby’s for! Being dull old ladies. I’ll take a walk in the sea air for my health, and you can retire to bed before the sun sets. We’ll blend right in. Just be sure to pay attention to the weather so we have something to talk about in the morning.”

I laugh and remind her to take the keys so she doesn’t have to worry about how long she stays out. And then I stay mostly true to my word. After my shower, my skin bright red from my attempt to steam myself alive, I investigate the house to see if there’s an attic. Sure enough, I find an opening in my closet ceiling. My phone’s meager light reveals that the attic extends the entire length of the pre–duplex remodel house. But it’s empty. There’s nothing to see, and nothing to sell.

Still, I can’t regret this Whitby detour. It was good for Elle, and that has value for me. Plus, the shower was divine. Clean and exhausted and feeling like an ancient old crone going to bed with the sun, I lie down and close my eyes.

I open them. It feels like someone’s weighted them with coins. My mother’s outside the window, staring at me, silent and furious. Somewhere in the house I hear crying. They both want me to go to them, but I stay where I am, curled in the bed, trying to ignore it all. I have a book of poetry—no, it’s Lucy’s journal—but I can’t read the words. They all blend and blur together. No matter how hard I try, I can’t understand her.

“Lucy!” I shout. That’s who’s crying. She needs me. I have to find her; I have to help her.

I struggle so hard to move that I pull myself out of the dream. The room is dark around me, and I struggle to ground myself in reality. My mother’s not outside the window, because it’s the second story of the Whitby house. Lucy’s not in danger. She’s not alive anymore. And neither is my fucking mom.

I’m just on the edge of consciousness, about to slip back under, when something pounces on the end of my bed. My scream tears through the night as eyes flash at me in the dark.

41

August 8, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

I never made it outside. The horizon roiled and crashed, reaching for us with foggy, clinging fingers. Even as high up on the hill as we are, I half wondered if the ocean would claim us. I half wanted it to. I was ready to greet it.

Mina caught me getting dressed to go out and stand in the chaos. The storm called to me. It felt familiar, the same as I feel inside with her so close and yet so far away. I pretended to be sleepwalking again and let her put me back to bed.

But I missed everything! Today on our walk to survey the damage, we heard tales of an enormous escaped dog, a ghost ship slamming into the harbor, and the death of one of the old men who pesters me whenever I’m out walking—he fell and broke his neck while sitting on my favorite bench! I’ll be furious if he haunts it, though unsurprised he could find a way to make me listen to his stories even after death.

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