Augury

First published in Fantome in 2019.

I.

The chime of the grandfather clock echoed through the hall as Calpurnia pushed the heavy wooden door open. The house smelled of a fire recently gone out; the warmth lingered, a welcome reprieve from the freezing barrage of the thunderstorm outside. She closed the door with a soft thud and surveyed the dark, empty house. The occasional lightning bolt illuminated the salon to the left through the windows, spilling light into the hallway just in front of her. Beyond the light from those windows, the hallway seemed to stretch on forever in the darkness.

Calpurnia raised her arms to either side of herself and slowly proceeded down the hall. Her left hand brushed the cool glass of the curiosity cabinet just outside the salon. The objects inside were not quite distinguishable in the momentary flashes of light; the shapes twisted and seemed to move between each illumination. Porcelain figures danced and glass trees swayed under the cover of darkness, pausing when the light caught them.

Leaving the light behind, Calpurnia continued cautiously down the hall. The walls hummed with latent energy, standing in wait for an unnamed catalyst. Her skin prickled as her fingers skimmed the invisible walls in the darkness, and the sound of the rain hitting the roof grew louder with each step. She stopped and raised a hand in front of her face, but could not see so much as a faint movement in the dark. A noise sounded distantly beneath the din of the rain: the shrill reverberation of a finger sliding down a musical string, gradually multiplying and filling the air with a cacophony of piercing trills—

The front door opened once more, suddenly lighting the hall. Calpurnia turned to see a figure standing in shadow, groaning as he closed the door.

“Apologies, miss,” the newcomer said in a hoarse and rasping voice, easing out of his dripping coat and hanging it on the coat stand by the door. “I was told you weren’t arriving until tomorrow.”

“I caught an earlier train,” she replied with affected calm, walking back down the hall to the door. Pausing in front of the newcomer, she laced her fingers together and let her intertwined hands hang in front of her, smiling. “I just couldn’t wait to be here.”

He laughed, interrupted by a slight cough. “The house wasn’t going to run away, you know.” He walked into the salon, kneeling next to the fireplace and prodding the ashes with a poker.

“There’s so much to do,” Calpurnia said as she followed him. “I wanted to get started right away.”

“There’ll be time enough.” He lit the fire and the dim orange glow grew to rid half the room of darkness. The shadows seemed blacker than the room had been with no light at all.

He stood, straightening his back slowly and brushing soot off his gnarled hands. The man was half a head shorter than Calpurnia at his full height, old and weathered like an ancient tree. The rain had slicked his grey-white hair against his neck. While Calpurnia shivered from the bone-chilling cold of the rain soaking her clothes and skin, he seemed unaffected, though he was just as drenched.

“You must be freezing, Miss Pierce,” he said, shuffling to the side and gesturing to the armchair in front of the fire.

She nodded. She moved past him with a smile and lowered herself into the chair. “Thank you, Mister…?”

“Oh,” he shook his head in bemusement at himself. “It seems the storm washed away my manners.” He extended a tremorous hand. “Fred Flynn.”

She shook his hand, startled by the texture of his dry, papery skin. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Flynn.”

He raised an eyebrow and clasped his free hand atop Calpurnia’s where they were joined. “Fred.”

She returned his serious expression. “Calpurnia, then.”

There was a momentary pause. Fred’s face broke into a grin first, and they both laughed.

As her smile faded, her gaze lingered on the dancing flames in the fireplace. Warmth replaced the chill, flooding her inside and out. She felt as though she was dispersing along with the heat, breaking into particles that permeated the house through the air and inside the walls, filling the cracks and empty spaces. It was not so much a feeling of being at home as that she felt she was the house, that she always had been the house, that her existence and the house’s existence had been from far away intertwined.

The chiming of the grandfather clock interrupted her reverie, and she blinked, feeling almost as if she had just awoken. “Goodness,” she mumbled.

“Ah, I should’ve thought,” said Fred, stepping away from the mantlepiece against which he had been leaning. “You’ll be exhausted from travelling. I’ll come by tomorrow and sort you out then.”

Calpurnia looked out the window at the storm. “It’s still raining. You can stay here tonight if you’d like.”

“That’s very kind of you, miss.” Fred was already in the hallway, putting on his coat. “But it’s not my house.”

She folded her arms, following him to the salon’s doorway. “It’s just as much yours as mine.”

He looked up at her with an enigmatic smile. “No. That it isn’t.”

After Fred left, Calpurnia lit a candle and walked up the stairs, which creaked with her every step. The rain fell in sheets on the roof, sounding almost like the ebb and flow of crashing waves. It was not difficult to imagine herself underwater: a deep-sea fish with one small light in the darkness, moving carefully through the infinite void.

She realised, upon reaching the first floor, that she had failed to ask which room was her bedroom. She opened the door to the first room at the top of the stairs. The air was heavy with dust, the earthy smell of the rain creeping inside and weighing it down further with cold humidity. The curtains had fallen off one window in a pile of pale damask on the scratched wooden floor. A dark wardrobe with a broken door hanging on tarnished brass hinges stood in the corner. The second room was in a similar state: cobwebs formed a ladder from the broken hat stand in the corner up to the ceiling, a small wooden table with scuffed edges in the centre of the room.

In the hallway between the second and third rooms, Calpurnia paused as she caught the sight of herself in an ornate gilded mirror. The candle cast half her face in light, catching on her prominent bones and giving her reflection a ghoulish appearance. Her long hair was pulled back in a bun, the dark colour made darker by the rain. The small wisps of hair by her face were drying, frizzy and curly. Her dark brown eyes looked pitch black as they stared back at her. Her delicate, long-fingered hand looked almost skeletal as it tightened on the candle holder.

She turned away from the mirror and kept moving down the hall. The third door was locked, but the fourth, thankfully, contained a bed, and Calpurnia barely managed to get into it before sleep overtook her.

She awoke the next morning to the sound of gentle rain hitting the roof. She rubbed sleep out of her eyes and looked around. She had not looked further than the bed the night before, but there was little else to see. The wooden floor was scuffed and dusty, and the walls were painted a fading sky blue. Directly across from the bed was an old wash stand, and Calpurnia looked back at her blurry reflection in the dirty, smudged mirror atop it. The shadowy, indistinct image was not recognisable as herself. She raised a hand and wiggled her fingers, more surprised than relieved to see the reflection do the same.

The clock on the ground floor chimed the hour as she descended the stairs, which creaked and groaned no matter how lightly she stepped. The sound of the rolling thunder outside comforted her in a way she could not explain; the thunder of the previous night had been heavy, rattling, and crackling, but the morning’s thunder was soft, like a purring kitten. Calpurnia smiled to herself as she stepped from the last stair onto the floor, inexplicably feeling already quite at home.

Faint grey light penetrated the house, illuminating the corridors and rooms she could not discern before. The light was neither bright nor dim, but a sort of in-between that was just enough to make the house more visible than it had been in the pitch-black night. Each room was similar to the ones she had seen upstairs: mostly bare, coated in a thick layer of dust, with a piece or two of broken and disused furniture. While she inspected the rusty tap of the kitchen sink, movement through the window caught her eye, and she looked up to see Fred making his way across the field, moving frantically and without co-ordination as he dashed through the rain.

“Morning,” he greeted her gruffly as she helped him out of his wet coat and hung it on the stand. He seemed less friendly than he had the night before, the warmth and welcome cooled by the ongoing downpour.

“I’ll light the fire,” she said, walking into the salon partly in a rush to warm Fred’s chilliness and partly to put some distance between them.

“No, no,” he waved her off. “I won’t be long.” He approached her, covering his hand with a handkerchief and pulling a keyring full of thick, utilitarian iron keys from his waistcoat pocket. “Best you learn them yourself,” he said, dropping the keys in her open hand. “Have a wander.”

Calpurnia inspected the keyring, sliding the heavy keys one-by-one around the iron ring. “One for each room, then?”

“Mm,” Fred grunted in assent. “Oh—no,” he corrected himself, holding up one finger. “The third room on the first floor has no key.”

She frowned, still studying the keys. “I’ll have one made, I suppose.”

Fred shrugged. An odd mix of what looked to be irritation and grim amusement crossed his face as he pressed his lips together. He seemed to be holding himself back from saying something more. Without a word, he walked back into the hall and removed his coat from the stand.

Calpurnia looked up in haste, dropping the keys to her side as she followed Fred. “Shall I make you some tea before you go?”

“I’d best leave you to your work, miss,” he said as he put his still-dripping coat on.

“If I should need anything—”

“You won’t,” he said with a smile. He touched his fingers to his cap and left before Calpurnia could say another word.

She heaved a sigh, crossing her arms and turning around to face down the hallway once more. The oft-heard clock stood in a dark nook halfway under the staircase. Light found its way into most corners of the house, even if just faintly, but not into this one. She approached the clock, squinting as she inspected it closely. It was the finest-crafted thing in the house; intricate swirls of rich, dark wood framed the surprisingly delicately painted pearlescent clock face. She shook with a sudden shiver and continued down the hall.

The door at the end of the hallway was locked, and Calpurnia turned the keyring over in her hands, pondering which key looked the most likely. The first and second keys she tried were unsuccessful, but the lock turned over with a deep clank for the third. Inside, the room was warmer than the hall, and in it stood a long, smooth wooden dining table with a tarnished silver candelabrum sitting in the centre. Only one chair stood at the head of the table, its seat broken through in a jumble of splinters and floral upholstery. The walls were a deep red, and the wooden floor was cleaner and less faded than the rest of the house. It was almost like stepping into another world, another time when the house was more alive.

Most of the doors were unlocked already, but for the rest Calpurnia made her way around the house determining which keys went to which locks. As promised, there was one fewer key than there were doors. Calpurnia took the last key from the lock to the room she had claimed as her bedroom. Her eyes rested on the door to the mysterious room beside it. Nothing about it seemed unusual from the outside; the doorknob and keyhole looked the same as every other in the house.

She stepped toward the door before she realised what she was doing. The floor creaked beneath her foot, and the clock’s announcement of the hour somehow seemed less of a courteous chime and more of a loud, panicked warning, underlined by the grumbling thunder outside. Calpurnia’s heart pounded in her chest. She examined each key on the ring. With a look of scrutiny at the lock, she settled on a key to try, and lined it up with the keyhole.

Before the key could enter the lock, a piercing shriek filled the air. Calpurnia was pushed back against the railing by a burst of cold, invisible wind. She dropped the keyring and clasped her hands over her ears, trying to no avail to keep the scream from ringing painfully through her head. It seemed the sound would never end, until it did, abruptly and completely. Shaking, she slowly lowered her hands from her ears. Her un-blinking eyes brimmed with tears as she looked back up at the door, where a dark brown eye stared back at her through the keyhole.

II.

Calpurnia awoke cold in bed to the sound of the clock’s peal. The room was dark and still, and a thunderstorm raged outside. The clock had chimed six bells, but she could not honestly say whether it was morning or evening. She pulled the covers up around her head but felt no warmth. Heaving a sigh, she pushed the quilt back and rose from the bed.

She walked to the window, drawing the curtain aside with the back of her fingers. The heavy rain blurred the windowpane, but in the distance a homey orange-yellow light glowed invitingly from Fred’s cottage. Thunder rumbled like an oncoming freight train, followed quickly by lightning that split the sky and illuminated the moors as far as Calpurnia could see.

She dropped the curtain and turned around to find herself in the salon. A fire burned in the fireplace behind an ornate brass screen decorated with a fish and seashell design. She frowned, cautiously easing herself onto the red velvet sofa.

“Hello?” she called out. “Fred?”

There was no response. She propped her elbow on the arm of the sofa, leaning into her hand and gazing into the fire. The chill refused to leave her, even sitting by the fireplace. As she watched the flames and her eyes unfocused, a whispering, buzzing sound became faintly audible between the crackles of the fire and the booming thunder outside. It seemed to originate from the very air around her, as if invisible particles themselves were speaking. She snapped back into focus, looking up from the fire and around the room.

The sound stopped abruptly. She missed it immediately; she could not have said why, but the sound had felt friendly, like the muffled conversation of loved ones from another room.

She rose and walked back to the window, looking out on the darkness. It was likely time to cook something, but she was not the least bit hungry. Over the years that had passed since she had moved in, she would often go to Fred’s for supper, and it was a possibility she briefly considered, but she hated to go out in the rain. She had earlier emptied the glass cabinet in the hallway in order to clean and rearrange it, but now the task seemed too unexciting. The lure of losing herself in a book for a few hours was much more enticing.

Calpurnia took a candle and walked up the stairs. Something about the house still seemed unfamiliar, although she could not set her mind to what it was; a general sense of indescribable unease permeated the air around her. As her foot hit the floor at the top, the sound of the storm outside stopped with an uncanny abruptness, and light flooded the windows.

She ran to the window in the first room to see a bright, sunny day outside, the sun high in the sky marking the middle of the day. Birds chirped merrily and fluffy white clouds sailed across the blue skies.

Just as suddenly, a bolt of lightning flashed, and the stormy darkness returned. Were Calpurnia not already chilled to the bone, her veins might have frozen over. She closed her eyes and swallowed a lump in her throat, hoping to quell the nervous shake seizing her through willpower alone.

She cautiously opened her eyes and almost breathed a sigh of relief to see it still dark. Tossing her head, she raised her candle higher and walked into the second room. The lush blue carpet muffled her footsteps as she walked to the bookshelf in the back, running her finger over the worn leather spines of the books, searching for a likely candidate. Nothing caught her interest, but there was another bookshelf to search.

Passing by the gilded mirror between the second and third rooms, she paused to look into it. Though she stood directly in front of the mirror, somehow her reflection seemed far away, blurred heavily as if a pane of frosted glass stood between the mirror and herself. She turned her body to face the mirror, then side-stepped to the left. The amorphous form moved as well; Calpurnia was not sure if it was her imagination, or if her reflection moved more slowly than she did.

She took a step closer to the mirror; her reflection made a vague movement, but did not appear any closer than before. She slowly stretched her arm forward with shaking, hesitant fingers nearing the glass—

—but before they could touch, she abruptly turned her back to the mirror, her breath coming quick as she leaned against the railing, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her.

She pushed the confusion, the fear, and the uncertainty to the corners of her mind, desperately trying not to think about the questions or acknowledge the answers. She steadied her breathing and, without looking back at the mirror, quickly walked past the locked room and into the bedroom. She knelt in front of the bookshelf and her gaze skimmed the books; the letters swirled together into shapes and symbols, impossible to read. With a sigh, she grabbed a book at random, tucked it under her arm, and walked back down the stairs.

Calpurnia paused on the ground floor, frowning at the contents of the glass cabinet. Everything she had emptied from the cabinet was there as if it had never been moved. She turned around to face the table upon which she had left the porcelain figures. Not a thing remained on the table, as if nothing had ever been placed there at all. Her fingertips grazed the table’s edge as she backed away from it. A cold wave of unnameable fear washed over her, freezing her arms in place. Maybe…maybe… she thought to herself, scrambling for an explanation.

She remembered the book under her arm and, grateful for the distraction, quickly walked into the salon and sat in front of the fire, opening the book. She blissfully forgot her confusion and fear as she read, even ignoring the clock’s account of the passing hours, until she heard a sound beneath the rolling thunder—one voice, then another. Leaving her hand on the book, she looked up and back toward the front door, expecting a knock. A key entered the lock, and suddenly the fire in the salon went out.

Calpurnia sat stone-still as she watched two people enter the house. A woman in a long black cloak stepped in, pushing back her hood. Fred, his hand covered with a rain-stained white handkerchief, took the key from the lock before stepping in behind her and closing the door. He dropped the keyring in his pocket and hung his coat on the stand before turning to take the woman’s cloak. Both dripped harmoniously on the wooden floor as Fred lit candles in the hallway, and Calpurnia watched the light creep toward the salon’s doorway.

“It’s a lovely house,” the woman’s voice came from around the corner.

Calpurnia stood and tiptoed to the doorway, placing a hand on the frame as she peeked around. The woman’s back was turned to Calpurnia. Her dark hair was pulled back in a low chignon, and her pale pink dress with its delicate white lace and small buttons made her look like one of the porcelain dolls in the cabinet: elegant, beautiful, fragile.

Fred walked out of the kitchen with a candle holder in one hand. He caught Calpurnia’s eye and smiled, but said nothing, returning his attention to the other woman. “It is a lovely house, yes,” he agreed. “Was rather a ruin when its most recent owner took possession.”

The woman looked around curiously. “It’s had extensive renovation, then?”

Calpurnia frowned, moving around the corner. “Fred? What’s going on?”

Fred looked directly at her, but his expression remained unmoved. The friendly, knowing smile did not waver as he looked from Calpurnia back to the newcomer. “Yes, yes. All but one room, but you needn’t worry about that.” His gaze drifted up in the general direction of the locked room upstairs.

The woman blinked, following his gaze and failing to find its object. “Why not?”

“She’ll take care of it.” Fred turned his head to look at Calpurnia again. His smile had acquired a touch of fond sadness.

“She’s…still here?” The woman’s confusion slowed her voice.

“Of course I am,” Calpurnia said, a terrified despair fracturing the indignant tone of her voice. She rushed from the salon doorway to stand in front of the woman and beside Fred. “I’m here.” She meant it as a statement, but it came out as a plea.

“She never left,” Fred said, his eyes cast down, looking at neither Calpurnia nor the other woman. “She came here one day and…maybe she meant to leave someday, maybe not. I couldn’t say. But she always had one more thing to do with the house, one more idea to put into place before she left. So, she never did.”

The woman smiled warmly as she looked around, taking in the room with a fondness of her own. “Maybe she couldn’t bear to leave it. She knew she was meant to be here.”

Fred frowned and shook his head. “Nothing so simple. Every day she made the choice not to leave. She had nothing here but the house. No other reasons to stay.” His wide blue eyes sparkled as he looked up at Calpurnia. She felt tears forming in her own eyes as he looked not at her, but right through her. “It’s the truest sort of love story, Miss Elsa. Calpurnia chose the house, and it chose her in return.”

The clock screamed from the hall. Ice filled Calpurnia’s veins as though it had burst through a dam. Gasping for breath, she fell backward against the stairs. She crawled up the staircase, pulling herself up with clawed hands. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen chimes, and the clock showed no sign of stopping. The world spun before her eyes, and when she closed them to shut it out, the sound of shattering glass and screaming filled her head.

She reached the top stair and fell on her back, her sobs and screams echoing off the walls. A narrow icy gust of wind brushed her face, and she sat up with a start. The door to the third room--previously locked--stood open.

“Here you are.” Fred’s voice sounded muffled from downstairs, and the keys clinked as they moved from his hand to Elsa’s.

Calpurnia scrambled to her feet, nearly tripping on the hem of her skirt as she ran into the third room, closing the door behind her. A single candle sat already lit on the bedside table and a key lay beside it. She picked the key up off the table and locked the door behind her, pressing her back flat against the closed door and holding her breath, listening intently.

Footsteps echoed through the empty halls. The stairs creaked under Elsa’s feet. Calpurnia heard her walk to the first room and stop outside the door. Incorrect keys rattled uselessly in the lock until Elsa found the right one and the door opened with a whine.

Calpurnia called to memory fixing the broken wardrobe in that room, pinching her fingers in the hinges as she set the door back into place. She remembered sweeping the floor, then spending nearly half an hour sneezing at all the dust suddenly sent swirling around the room. She remembered standing on her tiptoes to hang the new curtains that turned out to be six inches too short. She remembered sewing the correctly-sized curtains night after night by candlelight and sucking at pricked, bleeding fingers.

Now, she could see in her mind’s eye Elsa feeling the fabric of the curtains, swishing them back and forth experimentally, opening the wardrobe and running her finger along its dusty top. Calpurnia’s mouth filled with a bitter, coppery taste. With each breath in, she choked as stabbing pains pierced her heart. She felt Elsa’s unwelcome contact as though it was her own body and not the house that Elsa touched. Her blood ran through the vein-like threads in the curtains, her tears were in the paint on the walls. In three steps that felt like flying, she threw herself across the room and into the bed, nails tearing at the sheets as she writhed in pain.

Elsa moved from the first to the second room and Calpurnia’s misery did not abate. She sat up in bed, moaning bitterly as she stared at the door. Tears streamed down her face, freezing cold before they reached her jawline. Her breath caught in a gasp and she went quiet; she realised where Elsa was heading next.

Elsa’s footsteps approached the third room. The wavering light from the candle Elsa held cast dancing shadows that flickered underneath the door, creeping toward Calpurnia’s bed.

Calpurnia’s pounding heartbeat seemed to pulse with the walls of the room. She gingerly rose from the bed, tiptoeing toward the door and kneeling in front of it. She looked out the keyhole and saw Elsa’s hands fumbling with the keyring. A bubble of air travelled up through Calpurnia’s body and out through her throat, the scream seeming to come not only from her mouth but from the walls, the windows, the doors. Elsa fell back as if flung, landing in a crumpled heap next to the railing, loose hair falling across her face.

Quiet descended upon the house. The lights brightened, the walls receded, the heaviness in the air dissipated. Calpurnia took a deep breath, inhaling and exhaling slowly and serenely. She peered once more through the keyhole at the figure slowly pulling herself up from the floor.

Calpurnia pressed herself against the door, watching intently. Elsa sat up and rubbed her eyes. She lowered her hands from her face and slowly, warily turned to face the door. When their eyes met, Calpurnia gasped and fell backwards, her breath rapid and shallow as blood pounded in her ears. The terrified face staring back at her from the other side of the door was not Elsa’s, but her own.