Chapter 9
December comes, and with it comes snow.
It is not the first snow that Dani has ever seen technically, but it is the first time she has been around snow that lingers and stays for longer than a few hours. In the south, there had been moments of occasional snow, and there were ice storms that were so bad they shut off the electricity and had to eat as much of the food in the refrigerator as they could before hiking over to a hotel that had electricity and could keep them warm (and then, once the nearby church got electricity, to it because that was far cheaper than staying at a hotel) – but that was nothing like what is happening in Vermont.
The first time it stays, Dani stares out the window, biting at her thumbnail, and Jamie comes up behind her, wrapping a hand around her waist, and rests her chin on her shoulder. “You wanna build a snowman?”
They cannot know that in decades this phrase will become something else. For them, it isn’t.
Dani turns in Jamie’s grip so that their noses just touch and gives her a warm smile. “Yeah,” she says and gently presses a kiss to Jamie’s lips. “Yeah, I do.”
Jamie prepares the apple tree in their backyard for the winter months. She adds a thin layer of mulch around the base of the tree, which Dani could have guessed might help, but she also paints the side of the trunk facing the sun with a diluted latex paint. Apparently trees can get sunburn from the reflections of the sun on the snow. Dani would never have guessed that was possible. And every day that they wake up with new snow, Jamie takes great care to go outside and brush it from as many of the tree’s branches as she can reach, so that it doesn’t grow so heavy they snap under the weight.
The flower shop, too, has a different role during the holiday season. It still has flowers, albeit different ones, but it also has holly, mistletoe, and a few of the smaller live trees. Jamie holds a certain level of disdain for the normal practice of Christmas trees – chopping them down just to have something pretty sitting in the house for a month or so before casting it out to be discarded. She has less problem with the few people who take their dead tree and turn it into lumber for their fireplace – or have a bonfire out in the back, provided the snow is thick enough to keep the fire from leaping to any of the nearby houses – but she has decided to refuse the practice of selling live trees in that manner. Hers are all smaller trees in little pots of their own, with the intent that they are watered enough to live throughout the Christmas season and then taken somewhere nearby to be planted once the season is over, instead of just being thrown out. In fact, she has set up a retrieval program, if her customers sign up for it, so that she can take the trees to plant elsewhere once they are done with them.
It is a lot of work. More work than Dani would have done if the flower shop were hers alone – but then, if Dani was alone, she wouldn’t be running a flower shop. She most likely wouldn’t even be working in one. Her heart would be too sore from not being with Jamie anymore, and flower shops would only remind her of what she lost as a result of…well, of everything.
Fortunately, she hasn’t had to deal with that. She doesn’t believe that she will.
But the flower shop shuts down a few days before the holidays officially start. Jamie goes daily to check on her plants – through the back door so as to avoid customers who might otherwise invade and demand her attention, not that they’ve had anyone do so yet – but then the time is spent preparing their house, and the one they are sitting, for the arrival of Miles, Flora, Henry, and Owen. It doesn’t take long to do any of that, though, and then – then – they are here.
Dani is excited and anxious and afraid and all of those things at once.
But the excitement is greater than the anxiety.
Almost.
You finish Romeo and Juliet for what feels like the thousandth time, and you lay back on your bed, and you look at the ceiling, and you sigh. Your fingers interlace behind your head. You take a deep breath. It isn’t the worst thing to admit, but you are bored.
But it isn’t a familiar bored – your life, and your death, such as it is, have both been almost ritualistic habitual actions, done over and over again almost without end (although they have seem to have ended now, only to be replaced with this one). The difference is that, in your death, in your time on Bly, you forgot so much. It hadn’t seemed repetitive. You hadn’t even known it was repetitive, had only continued the motions in search for something only to completely forget again between each walk.
You do not remember decades – perhaps centuries – of the motion, but your body aches with the constant movement. It is grateful for the time you have spent curled up, reading, in your bed, being still.
The main difference between here and Bly is that forgetfulness. You are aware of the time passing here, you are aware of reading and rereading the same books over and over again, and you are aware of the time you spend in your little cell of a room. And that being aware of things happening over and over again incites boredom.
You are tired of this room. You are tired of the same books. You are tired of feeling like your wanderings are pointless.
Most importantly, you are tired of being alone.
No matter how much you have walked through the jungle on your side of the gate, you have found no one else. No thing else – one would imagine in a jungle there would be other animals: birds, insects, large prowling cats, venomous snakes, frogs, something else living that you could interact with.
But no. There is nothing. No animal, no insect, no reptile, no bird. No fish in the again clear stream flowing from her side of the gate to yours. You are truly and completely alone here.
You haven’t done as much exploration on the other side of the gate as you have here, instead following the path so that you can see the world through eyes that are not your own, but you are tempted to explore there just as thoroughly as you have here. You are bored, and you are lonely – and she described you as empty and lonely, so she should have known better than to leave you so completely alone.
When she called to you, your expectations were not ones you could put words to, but you can put words to them now. You expected more than this. More than to be treated like a beast in its cage, to have constant wards brought up against your very existence. Even animals in zoos are treated better than this.
And so the rage continues to bubble within you, and you climb the wall again. Not because there is ash in your water or the heady scent of fire smoke in the air, but because you believe it is time to make your presence known again. If your captor wishes to treat you like a predatory animal, then perhaps it is time to go on the prowl.
Dani feels the pressure at the nape of her neck, and her eyes widen as she presses her fingers to the spot. It doesn’t help. It hasn’t helped in so long, and yet she still does the same motion anyway. It once helped. There is always the possibility—
“Something wrong, Poppins?” Jamie asks, and Owen stops his stirring at the stovetop, turning to face them both. The question ends the cheerful, easy camaraderie that had fallen between them, and the air grows tense. Jamie steps over to her, away from Owen, where she has been standing to try and understand what he’s been doing. Dani suspects this will not help Jamie’s cooking in much the same way that no matter how much she watches Jamie make tea, hers never gets any better.
Dani presses her lips together. “She’s moving again,” she says, voice soft, and her eyes meet Owen’s briefly. They haven’t been together much since everything happened, and this isn’t the sort of thing that you can explain over a phone call, if you explain it at all. Phone calls from where he has been – London, Paris, the other ends of the globe – are so expensive that they don’t call, and while he sends them postcards, they often don’t know where he will land to always be able to answer him back. Half of the replies they have sent are returned to them without his having gotten them, but it’s better than nothing.
Owen’s wanderlust is worse than theirs was. They had each other to settle down with; he has no one.
Jamie will be like him, too, eventually, Dani knows. She will be stolen by Bly Manor just as much as Hannah Grose was. But Jamie at least gets the days, weeks, months, years between now and then. Owen was left with nothing. Nothing but them and his memories.
Owen nods once. “Of course, she is,” he says, moustache twitching once. “She heard friendly people, and she smelled good food. That would wake anyone up.” He lifts his spoon from one of the many pots on the stove and holds it out to her. “Here. Taste.”
Dani doesn’t know if he is talking to her or her, but she leans forward and takes a bit from the spoon either way.
You do not always taste what she does. In fact, it is very rare that you do.
And yet.
You do not taste this either. You do not smell it through her nostrils the same way that you cannot taste it on her tongue. Not like this. Not without tucking her away entirely, and that is not your intent. You know that will only lead to thicker, higher walls and a moat and thick, sharpened poles where the barbed wire is now – and while, yes, you could still get around all of those things, you feel as though you should not have to do so.
You do not taste what he is offering and you cannot smell it and yet because a part of her is not sure whether the offer is to you or not, when she takes a taste of it, some appears in a bowl near to you, readymade with a spoon resting just inside. It is a distraction, perhaps, and if it is, it works well enough – you turn from her eyes to the bowl next to you. Instead of continuing to stretch yourself beneath her skin, you pull yourself to yourself – keep yourself with yourself – and curl up just behind her eyes with your own bowl of soup to watch.
Dani winces and pinches the bridge of her nose.
“That bad, huh?”
“No, no, it’s good, it’s—” Dani shakes her head, steps back, and presses so hard on the bridge of her nose that she thinks she might get a nosebleed. The pressure doesn’t move, so she knows that the creature is still there, watching them, but it’s softer somehow. Less evident. As though the creature is, in some way, shape, or form, content. She has no idea why. “Was that for her?” she asks, nodding to the spoon.
Owen meets her eyes – and she knows, somehow, that he is trying to meet those of the creature within her, too. “It was for whoever wanted it.”
Dani nods as he turns back to the pot, stirring again. Jamie glances over to her, and Dani shrugs once. “It’s okay,” she whispers, offering her a little smile of her own. “She’s…still there, but she’s…. I don’t know.” She presses her fingers back at the nape of her neck, closing her eyes and letting out a little breath at the cold.
“Hannah used to do that, too, you know,” Owen says, and Dani’s eyes snap open. She stares at him, searching his eyes, and he nods toward her. “Hand on the back of her neck. She did it a lot over those last few weeks you were with us. I think,” and here he clears his throat, trying to bring himself to say it, and finally forces it to come out, “I think it was because of the way she landed. Her neck snapped when her head hit the…the rock.” He presses his lips together and turns back to the stovetop.
Dani’s eyes widen. “I’m not dead, Owen,” she says, and it’s immediate, it’s saying it to herself as much as she’s saying it to him, although she doesn’t know why she needs to say it. Of course she isn’t dead. She can’t be. She can’t be.
“I don’t think you are,” he says, and the words feel warm and calming. “It’s just…something she used to do.”
Jamie reaches over and rubs her hand along Dani’s back. “It’s alright, Poppins. He didn’t mean—”
“I know what he didn’t mean.” Dani swallows and nods to herself, but when she glances back to Owen, she sees that reflection that is not hers in the metal of one of the pots. This time, she doesn’t jump back – it’s easier when she doesn’t, and while she has yet to become accustomed to it, there’s something familiar in when it happens. She looks at the creature’s featureless face, and she takes a deep breath, and she nods. “I’m sorry.” She steps forward and rests her chin on Owen’s shoulder. It’s familiar, it’s warm, and it’s almost like having the brother she never had.
No matter how much Eddie’s mom had said that she was just as much a part of their family as Eddie was, Dani has never been able to really see his brothers as her own. They were there, sure, and in those last few days after he died, they stared at her like she was crazy. Everyone had – she’d been jumping at mirrors (almost like she is now, although she doesn’t like to think about the comparison) – and they hadn’t…. Whatever comfort having siblings should have had after Eddie’s death, they didn’t offer it.
Siblings, Dani likes to think, would have supported her when it came to being with Jamie. A part of her says that she could maybe tell them, but she knows better than to try. They aren’t really her brothers. They aren’t really her family.
Owen, here, with her, and Jamie, who hasn’t left her since Bly – these are her family. Odd that they should mean more to her than the people she knew her entire life before meeting them, but it’s true. It is completely true.
“It’s okay.” Owen turns just enough that his moustache brushes against her cheek, and Dani laughs, stepping back so that she can brush the tickle away with her fingers. “I’m sorry, too.” When he turns, it’s with the patient smile she knows is why Hannah fell in love with him, why any girl would be lucky to have him if he’d allow himself to be had (and she knows he never will again, the same as Jamie won’t after her – Jamie has never said it, but she has never needed to. Dani knows. Dani knows). He waves her back with one hand. “Food’s almost done. It did taste good, didn’t it?”
When Dani nods, she feels the creature nodding with her. It isn’t a pleasant feeling – it isn’t a pleasant feeling at all – but it isn’t as horrible as it normally is. The creature’s nod is slower, so it isn’t in sync with hers, and that feels weird in and of itself, but there’s also this expectation – something that tells her she should say something to Owen.
She doesn’t want to, but she does anyway. “I think….” She presses her fingers to that spot at the base of her neck again and winces before swallowing once. “I think she likes it, too.”
Jamie’s eyes widen – she can see them out of the corner of her eyes – but Owen nods in understanding. He meets her eyes again, but she feels as though he is looking through her, beyond her, into her. “Thank you,” he says, but she knows that he is saying it not to her but to her.
Her eyes flick to the side of the pot again, and although Dani isn’t smiling, she can see the features on the creature’s face lift as though she is attempting to do so, as though she is attempting to smile. Dani nods once. “I think she likes you.”
“I hope she does,” Owen says, turning back to his pot. “For all of the horrible things she may have done, for all of the horrible things she tried and did not succeed, she kept Hannah around longer. She gave me more time with her. I’m grateful for that.”
“She’ll take Dani away from me,” Jamie says, staring at him pointblank, her voice firm steel. “I can’t be grateful for that.” She steps forward, one hand clenching into a fist. “She tried to kill her. Dani wakes up sometimes in weird places and doesn’t know how she got there, she looks and sees her reflection, she feels her moving about in her skull, and I cannot be grateful for—”
You finish the bowl. You ache for more, and it refills. You finish the bowl again.
You consider, and you think perhaps it is not your place.
They are arguing over you.
You push forward, and you tuck her away, and you put her in that cell that is a room of your own, full of new bookshelves covered with books, with the bowl of fruit readymade, with cups should she want to make her way to the cool stream of water to get herself a drink, and you will the bowl of whatever he has been making to her and hope that maybe it gets there.
If not, that is not your fault. You would not have stepped forward if you did not think it was important.
They argue and you look at the two of them and your head tilts ever so slightly to one side.
You haven’t learned to speak yet. You are sure, if you tried, that you could, if you wanted, but you do not want to speak yet. You could just as easily unhinge her jaw in that low, guttural yell that you have, but you have a feeling that would not go over well. They would not appreciate that.
You walk to the living room, and you hear the brunette questioning you – questioning her – but you ignore them both, looking for a book and a pen. The pen feels weird in your – her – hand. It has been….
You do not know how long it has been since you have held a writing utensil, and you certainly have not held one quite like this.
You are not sure how you will write with it, but you can at least underline words.
Romeo and Juliet waits for you.
Dani blinks and stares and she is sitting on the couch with a book open in her hands and both Jamie and Owen staring at her. “What?” she asks, glancing from one to the other of them. “What?”
Jamie points, wordless, to the words underlined therein.
Dani looks.
Here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer’d; beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.
Dani blinks a couple of times and looks up. “Did I underline this?”
“I don’t think you did,” Owen replies.
Dani takes a deep breath and glances over to Jamie. “What happened?”
“You—” Jamie presses her lips together. “She came in here, and she underlined those.” She takes a deep breath and meets Dani’s eyes. “You know I don’t Shakespeare. What does it mean?”
Dani glances down and reads the words again, brushing her fingers along them. “I…I think it means to quit assuming that I’m dead.”