Chapter 7
They find a place for Henry, Flora, and Miles to stay. It is easier than they thought it would be – there are houses that are open over the holidays as people go south for warmer weather or travel because they want to be with their families – and Dani and Jamie have made enough in-roads with their neighbors and customers that they are asked to housesit and given permission to allow others to stay there, provided that said others don’t break anything. It is a relief – an easy relief – and when Owen hears what is happening, he decides to come up as well, because what could be better than a big Bly Manor family reunion for Christmas?
Of course, Dani’s mother has called. She wants Dani to come back for the holidays. She wants to see her daughter. Dani doesn’t want to go without Jamie, doesn’t want to explain why she won’t go without Jamie, doesn’t want to add that additional complication when she could disappear without warning at any moment, and the thing is? The thing is that she knows that her mother doesn’t really mind. Eddie’s mom is still in contact, and she asks for Dani to come visit when she can – and there’s a little pressure there, not unlike the pressure that the creature puts at the back of her neck, for Dani to come spend time with the people who should have been her extended family over the holidays – but the truth of the matter is that she doesn’t want to spend her holidays with them either. Not as much as she wants to spend it with Jamie – with Flora and Miles and Owen. Henry less so, but he’d been there, too, at the end.
Not the end.
They are still alive. She is still alive. And she is still here.
Halloween comes and goes, and Dani and Jamie stay inside. Jamie answers the door for the trick-or-treaters; Dani tries, but whenever she sees small children, something in the center of her chest grows warm and thrums with the same uncanny pressure that she normally gets at the back of her neck. The older children – and the adults who come with them – the ones who have decided to wear more spooks than other costumes are beyond what she wants to see; there is nothing funny or entertaining about the undead when you have dealt with them personally. Even those who wear the masks of plague doctors send a shiver down her spine, as though she has seen something quite like them out of the corner of her eye some time before, although she cannot say just where or when.
(She knows it is Bly or it is the remnants of the memory of the creature within her. She knows this. She knows it, but it doesn’t make things any better.)
Jamie curls up next to her on the sofa in-between the door-knocking or the doorbell-ringing, and Dani rests her head on her girlfriend’s shoulder. Every now and again, Jamie brushes her hand through Dani’s hair, presses a kiss to her forehead. It’s a simple thing, and yet it stills the pressure within her and leaves only the warmth in the center of her chest, something comforting instead of somehow constraining.
The weather is growing colder. There is a gentle breeze whenever Jamie opens the door.
YouShe feels almost at peace.
It scares her.
After the intrusion in your personal space, you find that the fence with the rusted, locked gate has changed yet again. Where before, it had been a simple thing, and then, after feeding the brunette the slice of apple, one covered with barbed wire, it is now a thick stone wall – still with barbed wire at the top and still with that same rusted, locked gate keeping it closed. But even the gate has changed – where before, it was just a simple gate as might hold together the two ends of the fence with no particular thought, a gate that was only about waist high and could be jumped over easily enough, it is now a much taller wrought iron construction. The iron is twisted into the shape of flowers to which you do not yet have a name, into trees with deep roots that tangle around the bottom edge, with apples blossoming from their limbs.
But the lock holding the gate together is still just as rusted and old as the gate itself seems shiny and new. It’s a small detail that you do not understand. Why replace the gate with a newer one and not replace the lock? What is so sentimental about this one? Is it the rust? You do not know.
On the other side of the gate, you can see that the fruit trees have changed, too – no more apple, no more orange, no more plum – and have been replaced with something else, something new. There is a warm fall breeze on the other side, and it occasionally comes through the gate and brushes against your skin. Your mouth waters.
There are trees on your side of the gate now. The fruit is a little harsher, a little more bitter than it is on the other side, but it is here all the same. The stream of cool, brisk water is smaller on your side, but it is still there. You are still allowed to eat and drink, and your room is still slowly filling with books upon books upon books. It seems they have begun a sort of rotation – there isn’t room enough for all of them in your little cell – so they come as you desire. The only constant is that first one – Romeo and Juliet – and a part of you wonders if you might find another Shakespearean play if you look hard enough.
The new walls on either side of the gate do not intimidate you. If you want, you will climb over them the same as you climbed the fence – a little worse for wear, perhaps, because there aren’t many places to grip or climb and because if you jump from the top you might break something (you will not break anything – you do not know how you know so, but you know that this is true) – but you haven’t tried yet.
Yet.
But even your last chest could not hold you forever, even your last chest filled with water, even your last chest was broken to allow you to wander and walk and wake as you once did, and this wall, too, will not contain you for very long, if you desire it.
You simply have not had the desire to go across again.
Yet.
You do not like being chided like a dog with a stolen bone. If you must be a dog, you are one with a bone you have been given, being punished by the person who gave you the bone in the first place. You have done nothing wrong. They are meant to care for you. Not whatever this is.
But you are willing to wait it out.
For now.