The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Paranormal Romance

Thirty-Seven

Shrieks erupted at the top of the house. Veronica couldn't see the tower from her balcony, but her mind was pulled toward it, to the firelight flickering under the door where juddering laughs echoed out, and the sound of children weeping.

Sweat trickled down her sides. She closed the curtains and hung her head, wondering what was to become of them.

Still clinging to the curtains, she opened them slightly to look out.

In the arched doorway of the ruined chapel was a glowing white wolf. It seemed, over the distance, that the wolf's ears flattened back, that its eyes glinted red. A rushing sensation, like the wind, iced Veronica's skin. A flash of white came flying at her.

By the time she realized what was happening, she'd been knocked to the floor. Teeth were in her hair, snout seeking her throat. Expecting at any moment to be ravaged, she screamed, staggered to her feet and tore away, only to be knocked down again.

"Help!" She screamed at the top of her lungs.

She was tossed onto her back. Arms over her eyes, she rolled onto her stomach again. She expected to be bitten, but the weight lifted off.

"God! Oh, God!" she muttered under her breath, sobbing with terror.

It had stopped.

Slowly, warily, she lifted her head and looked around.

There was nothing there.

A little bolder this time, she leaned on one elbow and searched the shadows with her eyes.

"I saw it. I know I did. I saw a wolf."

Where did it go?

Had she gone mad? The possibility that she'd imagined the attack was somehow more frightening that if it had really happened. Veronica rose, shaking, to her feet. Her bodice had been torn open at the neck, exposing the silver crucifix. She pulled the ragged edges together around her throat.

Perhaps, in her madness, she'd torn it herself.

Veronica crossed herself. Maybe the crucifix had saved her. It was all so confusing.

A howl echoed from somewhere inside the house.

She hadn't been hallucinating. There was a wolf inside the house.

She grabbed a candle branch, raced to the twin's rooms, and banged on the doors.

"Jacques! Jacqueline!" she whispered their names, and got no response.

The howl had come from upstairs.

The beast must be looking for the children.

Desperate to find them, she strode back out into hallway, and flew toward the gallery that looked over the vestibule. Her harried reflection in a huge mirror that hung on the end wall near the stairs almost frightened her to death. Catching her breath, she carried on toward her reflection to the stairway, and looked up at the third floor landing.

It was pitch dark up there. The dead silence told her the rooms at this part of the house were vacant. Never had silence seemed so sinister.

What about Mrs. Twig?

Veronica skidded quietly to the housekeeper's bedroom and tapped on the door.

"Mrs. Twig? Are you there?"

Receiving no answer, she opened the door and went in. Empty. She hurried downstairs. Entered room after room. No one was home. She barged into the kitchen with its pots and pans gleaming dully from the walls, its huge hearth black with its cauldron. Empty.