Chapter 1
Horses’ hooves clopped on the cobblestones, echoing in the empty, gas-lit streets. They trotted around a corner, lugging along the heavy black carriage. Somewhere in the distance, a whistle sounded, breaking the still air of a cursed night.
Inside the carriage, a woman was shrouded in the darkness of her corner; thin fingers brushing away the curtains. She peered briefly out, saw empty streets, and released the fabric. Her hands dusted her face, particularly fingering the black netting that shielded her expressions from the outside world. For the most part, she was alone.
Except for the shadow sitting across from her.
He spoke to her quite often, this shadow of hers. He was dressed entirely in black, with eyes like an awful red abyss. They often burned her own stare, and brought tears to her eyes. He was awful to her some nights, and others he was uncharacteristically friendly.
He was her only friend...and sometimes, something more.
The shadow blinked at her, stretching his legs across each other. Then he leaned back and continued to watch her.
“Do you think we’ll arrive in time?” His low voice crawled across the cab, sending comforting chills down her back. At one point, his voice used to make her blood curdle and her hair stand on its end. The woman looked up, curling her fingers deeper into the veil, a small smirk blooming over her lily-white complexion.
“How should I know?” She choked out a sharp laugh; a contrast to her regular silvery tone of voice. “You’re the all-knowing, all-seeing demon.”
The demon clicked his tongue accusingly at her, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees: “Yes, but you’re the girl who sees people like me. I’m sure the very eyes that let you glimpse into the realm of shadows would let you observe what no ordinary mortal could...even more so.” His red eyes sparkled as a bar of glowing light from the passing gaslight illuminated his sharp features. In the light, she saw that his skin was ghastly pale: but she knew that already. She’d seen it in many different lights in the past, and had even dared to run her naked fingers across his bare canvas.
As a child, the woman had faced her own demons when her mother had died. The true events of the mother’s death had not been disclosed to her daughter, or to her family. She had never gotten a proper burial either. Wrought with grief, the young girl imagined that she had seen her mother many times in her bedroom -- just watching over her.
But she hadn’t imagined any of it.
For years after, things like this happened to the woman. The dead always came back to her: corporeal manifestations or living monsters. They always came to her, she found, for she was the only one that could see them; that could talk to them. Trying to persuade her father and older brother of these events had only fueled their disdain for her, something that she had been groomed to understand her whole childhood. They threatened to send her to the asylum many times, which filled the child with dread and the aching belly of fear. So, for the most part, she kept her visions and her ‘Wicked Sight’ to herself.
Until she met Samael. He was a monster, one of those demons that the church religiously preached. He hadn’t always been one, she reminded herself, though more often than not she forgot that optimistic fact. Samael had, at one point, been tricky to keep under control, but the woman’s persuasive words and compassionate heart had somehow broke through his own cage of contempt. Their story was something of a fairytale; if a fairytale was full of natural evil and illicit affairs. While he was often a villain, there were times when he was a hero to the woman. For the most part, above it all, he was her mentor.
And that was the part of Sam that she loved.
“Now, Sam, that isn’t how it works and you know that.” The woman chastised him with her eyes, and the demon reclined back again with hands in mock surrender.
“You've got me there darling, though I can't help but wonder what sort of potential you might have underneath that thick skin of yours...and those thick layers.” Sam teased, stroking out a long and lusty laugh. The woman held back her own, burying it with her thick black glove.
She cleared her throat to speak: “It can be said, Samael, that we women can handle ourselves well enough -- thank you very much. Those suffrage pamphlets that arrive at my door aren’t just kindling.”
Sam snorted. “I didn’t take you for the suffragist type Mary. I never have.”
“Well, I suppose people change. Times are quickly evolving, and we ought to as well.” Mary said breathlessly, avoiding the burning glare of Sam’s cat eyes. He watched her intently for only a moment, without saying anything, and then faded back into his own darkness. She had learned to keep her distance, most times, from this demon. Only once had she almost let her heart be swallowed by his winning smile and his charming preaching. But never again.
The carriage slowed, creaking to a halt. The sudden jerk threw the curtains aside only briefly, and any evidence of where Samael was seated was gone. There wasn’t even an indent left on the cushions.
The driver hopped down and the side door was opened. Mary gathered her ebony colored skirts; the many different layers of grey and black swirling around her feet as she hopped off the final step. Hulking over the street was the massive giant of a mansion. Age old grime and filth coated the bottom of the house, but as it stretched toward the skies, it was absolutely white. Vines and cracks streaked the sides and front of the home, tainting it a sick green and black. High above, in one of the lit windows, a shadow darted across the curtains.
Mary took a deep breath, and soon felt a familiar weight being pressed inside of her hand. The fingers squeezed against her own, lacing like ribbons in a bodice. It acted like a memento of strength, and helped carry the woman up the many stairs and to the looming front doors of the estate.
She trailed her fingers along the oversized, lion-shaped knocker. The creature's face was sculpted immaculately in serpentine. The knocker came up three times with a heavy groan, and then down thrice with an even heavier slam. She flinched every time, but never stopped squeezing the weight in her palm. The oaken gates creaked inward, revealing a long line of light seeping in from the parlor. A figure, a little girl in a white nightgown, stood at the door. Mary’s heart froze, but she knelt down to the girl’s line of sight anyway. There was a chronic ache of pain in Mary’s head, and she knew that the little girl wasn’t alive.
“Hello, sweetie,” Mary said with a tilt of her head. “I’m Miss Mary Maguire.”
The little girl at the door wiggled in place for a moment. Big fat tears rolled down her face and smeared her dirty cheeks.
"Do you know who called upon me, child?" Mary asked, furrowing her brows. The child didn't speak. Mary took the moment to analyze the child for all that she was: tired, starved and dirty. The sheer fact that the child was already dead bit viciously into Mary’s soul, but she shook away the guilt.
"Can I come in?" The girl sucked on her thumb, and with her doll sized eyes, sized Mary up and down. The child’s eyes glittered as she soaked in the woman, but hesitated for the briefest moment on the space beside Mary. She smiled at the girl, hoping to take the attention off of Sam. In the corner of her eye, and even from behind the veil, Mary could see Sam’s darkened silhouette visible. She squeezed her hand once, and he disappeared into the fog. The child locked eyes with Mary again.
“Thank you, sweetie.” Mary said as the girl pulled the door open even further, allowing all of the woman’s skirts into the room. It was cold-- deadly cold, despite the unfathomable amount of candles lit everywhere. Shadows lingered at every corner. The home was a wreck, just as much as it had been on the outside: perhaps even more. Yet, just the same, there was an untouched elegance to the golden candelabras and bone-colored tables.
’If the place is deserted, who called on me?’ Mary thought suspiciously as she stepped forward and to the stairs. The little girl, still sucking on her thumb, started to glide toward the staircase. Though her legs moved, her feet didn’t touch the ground. They hovered a good half inch above the floorboards. Mary’s heels clacked on the wood as she followed the child.
The broad wooden stairs had patches of carpet missing, and beneath the gaping holes was only darkness. She didn’t even want to think of what lay at the bottom. Mary avoided the holes and continued up and to the left, where the steps rounded and met at a landing with the other half. Many doors, some open and some shut, stood on a singular wall.
The little girl went towards one of the closed doors and walked through it. Mary palmed the knob, twisting it slightly and found it locked. She squeezed the crystalline surface and could even feel the chill through her gloves. She put both hands on the door and felt around it, taking in the cold wood. Her mind expanded. Many a time in the past, Mary had found herself at odds with many locked doors. In experience, she had realized that her supernatural powers could be concentrated and used to upset the locks. It was very helpful... many times.
A pale hand settled over her left one, Sam glaring at the door with deadly accuracy as he calculated in his mind. Mary didn’t even look over at him, she simply let his hands guide her own.
“That little brat probably wants to drop you from the second floor and make you a ghostly governess. She just oozes selfishness.” Sam growled, his fingers tightening on Mary’s. She held her breath, not daring to vex the demon’s contempt for innocence; which could easily grow into blistering anger.
“Do you think she’s the one that called on me?” For the most part, it wasn’t always living people that called on Mary’s service. Sometimes the dead were the ones that directly appealed to her. In this case, what brought Mary and Sam to this marble estate on Leward Street was a singular note delivered to Mary's bedside table the previous morning. She had awoken to find it there, dirty and ripped, and hardly legible...but with only four words. "Leward Street, Help me."
Mary looked over to see Sam shrug. “Perhaps. For now we can only guess so. You better hurry on in. If you fall, I just might catch you. Any longer and, well--” Then he was gone. There was a click, and her eyes darted to the lock.
Mary inhaled deeply and twisted the crystal knob, swinging the door out. It shrieked like a dying cat. The entire room was dark. Her hot breath clouded in the air.
“Hello? Sweetie? Where did you go?” Mary called, squinting her eyes. She saw, right in front of her, the young spirit. The little girl stood there, sucking on her thumb and rocking slowly. Mary approached, crouching with much difficulty to meet the child's eyes again. She strained against her many skirts and corset, but managed to get onto her hands and knees. From there, the room was dimly lit. ’From a child’s point of view.’ From this angle, she could see a lot more. 'Curious...what is she trying to show me--'
Children’s skeletons on the floor. Scattered. Curled up in fetal positions or flung out like a star, the tiny bones were scattered all over. Some had skulls attached; others did not. On impulse, Mary’s glove reached her mouth as she gaped in horror. While she had been on this job for many years now, and a dead body or gruesome aftermath didn’t phase her anymore, it was always the children that got to her. Innocence ruined, young lives ended...it all just tortured Mary.
But, even more so, it roused her to go on.
Gulping, she looked over at the girl. “Are you one of these children, little one? Show me where your body is.” The dim light brightened in one spot, on one of the fetal positioned corpses. In fact, it hadn’t even decomposed to bone yet. This moment was crucial, then. Mary had found that communicating with spirits whose demises were recent yielded the most results and the most intelligent of responses.
“Did you live in this house?” She gathered herself and took off her hat and veil, setting it down and crawled past the skeletons to the little girl’s corpse. The light surrounding the body gathered and dispersed in a pulse.
“Once for yes, twice for no," Mary had done this before-- as communicating with spirits very rarely yielded acutal dialogue. "Did you live in this house?” The skin was cold and the limbs were extremely taut. The light pulsed twice.
“Were you invited in this house?” Deep discoloration on the side of the face closest to the floor. One pulse of light.
“Was it a long time ago?” Bruises dotted the body, concentrated in the shape of a large hand around the neck. Two pulses of light. The spirit was aware of her death, and at that, a recent death. Mary's heart was ramming like a freight train through her chest.
“Did the person who invited you in do this to you?” Wide, glass eyes. Staring. One pulse.
“Did you call on me?” Blood under the fingernails. Two pulses.
“Did your killer call on me?” Evidence of binding around wrists and ankles. One pulse.
Mary’s breath chilled in the room, the lights starting to dim around her. A tickling of hot breath lingered on the back of her neck, making the hair stand on it’s end. She detected someone behind her, and it definitely wasn’t Samael. “Is your killer in this house?”
One pulse.
“Sam...!” Mary whispered urgently. “Sam?” She bit the inside of her cheek and waited ten seconds for some feeling of the demon friend.
There was nothing.
She dared not turn around.
She returned her attention to the fading light surrounding her body, and the feeling on the back of her neck. Mary’s heart thumped loudly in her ears. “Is the killer in this room?”
One pulse.
Mary held her breath, a shuddering sigh knocking into her chest. With a wobbling grip, she managed to get to her feet and hold herself together. The breath on her neck huffed out again, a low growl barely noticeable slipping out. Dread clung in Mary’s stomach, starting to weigh her down a bit like a ton of bricks. She took one step around the corpse, and the growling increased in volume.
“Is the...is the killer... behind me?” Mary whispered with a horrified gasp.
One pulse.
