Beautiful Demons

33. We Were Connected Somehow

A woman in white came to me in my dreams that night.

She was young and full of life. The sun followed her around and she walked in a garden of the most amazingly beautiful flowers. When she laughed, it sounded like happiness.

The woman sat by a fountain, and I recognized it. The fountain from the garden at Shadowford. Only clean and running with sparkling, cool water. She dipped her hand into the water and smiled.

But a cloud covered the sun and filled the garden with shadows. The woman looked up, fear written across her features. She stood, then ran to the house. In my dream, Shadowford Manor was different. Freshly painted, there were no vines crawling up the side and no creaking boards on the front porch. I thought this must be how it used to look a hundred and fifty years ago when it was new.

I followed the woman in white as she ran up the front steps and into the house. Darkness followed her, turning everything gray. I heard a loud crack as a bolt of lightning shot across the sky.

The woman ran up the stairs, looking behind her as though she were being followed. But she wasn't looking at me. It was more as though I were a ghost and she was merely looking through me.

When she turned her face, I saw that I knew this woman. She was the same woman from the photograph. The picture frame I'd found in the empty bedroom. I wondered who she was. I followed her up the stairs to the second floor, then down to the end of the hall, just past the last bedroom. At first, I thought she was trapped. There was nowhere else for her to run. But she placed her hand on a section of dark wood paneling in the wall and a door opened.

Stairs appeared in the opening. A secret passageway up to the third floor. The woman looked back one last time, terror on her face, then disappeared up the stairs. I tried to follow her, but as I stepped into the shadows, I lost my footing and fell. I fell through the house and down into darkness.

I sat up in bed, out of breath. Sweat trickled down my back. My bedroom was dark, but a sliver of moonlight shone through my window. The picture of the woman in white lay on my bedside table and I picked it up. It was definitely her, but who was she?

Somewhere in the house, I heard a scream. Distant, but real. I rushed out of bed and went to my door. When I turned the knob, the door was locked. I ran to my desk, got the same bobby pin I'd used the night Tori died, and quickly unlocked the door. In the hallway, it was pitch dark. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust, and then I could only make out the dark silhouettes of big objects like the grandfather clock on the landing. I tiptoed down the hall.

I wasn't sure where the scream had come from, but I had a feeling I now knew how to reach the third floor of the house. Was that where they'd taken me when they cut my hand? I wondered.

I walked slowly to the end of the hall. My long nightshirt billowed around my legs and I shivered. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I wanted to know the truth. Whoever that woman was, she had lived in this house before. Maybe over a hundred years ago. And she wanted me to know how to get up to the third floor.

I felt along the wall until I was sure I was in the right place. In the darkness, I could make out the door to the empty bedroom at the end of the hall, and just past that, the wood paneling where the woman had opened the hidden staircase.

With a deep, ragged breath, I put my hand against the smooth wood surface and pushed. I gasped as the panel gave way and a door opened in front of me. A light from above spilled down and illuminated the stairs. They were narrow and worn. I stepped onto them with my bare feet and was surprised to find that they were strangely warm.

I hesitated before putting all of my weight on that first step, remembering my dream. But as I carefully moved forward, I realized that these stairs were solid. I climbed up, letting my hands run along the walls that framed either side of the strange staircase.