The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Paranormal Romance

Forty-Seven

Veronica raced down the hallway to the back of the house where a flight of stairs descended to a narrow corridor with closed doors on either side. A door at the very end opened into the servants' kitchen that looked out on a vegetable garden and a weedy, scraggy dirt lane. Veronica put up her hood and stepped outside. Fighting the wind, feeling buffeted on all sides, she made her way down the lane to a row of spare, white hovels until she found the one marked Pitchfork Cottage.

As she approached the door, she heard Mr. and Mrs. Croft shouting at each other. A baby was crying. Expecting a hostile reaction, Veronica knocked timidly. The door burst open and out wafted the strong smell of whiskey and the burly frame of Mr. Croft. Even in the house he wore his stovepipe hat.

"Well?"

"There are some problems at the house," Veronica said. "We need you to secure the windows."

"On a night like this?" a woman yelled from the depths of the cottage.

Mr. Croft called back to his wife. "Hold that thought, darling. I'll be back shortly."

"I'll be here," the woman's rasping voice replied.

Veronica had all she could do to keep up with Mr. Croft as he strode down the lane toward Belden House. She couldn't believe that the wind didn't blow his hat off.

"All right, where is it you want me to go?"

"There's a tower room on the third floor, with a row of three tall windows above a balcony. And a room with no windows."

"I know where it is. Its blasted high."

"I know." Veronica couldn't imagine how he was to get up there.

Putting a small cigar in his mouth, lighting it with a snap of tinder, Mr. Croft turned a corner, and headed toward a shed at the end of a small garden. He went in and came out with a heavy-looking ladder that he swung onto his shoulder as if it were weightless. Veronica followed him like a dog, not even thinking of going back into the house.

When they reached the tower, it was cloaked in moonlight, its sinister air increased by bright mists. Veronica slowed her pace and looked up at the topmost window, a narrow, black slit clogged with red ivy.

Rafe was in there.

"Rafe!" she shouted, reaching up as if to hold him.

The ivy in the window rustled. A powerful force thrust against the bars hidden under the leaves, making the iron screech. A black arm waved out, then withdrew.

What was that?

"Rafe?" Veronica's voice squeaked.

Fingers circled the bars, tried to bend them, then shook them hard. Snarls poured down. It seemed two eyes looked out through the ivy leaves, sharp yet somehow blind, as if the soul that should have been there, had been snuffed out.

Veronica narrowed her eyes to see more clearly the black paws that were wrapped around the bars. Shaking, shaking...the bars were loosening...Stone crumbled, and a light cloud of mortar dust rained to the ground.

Veronica was transfixed. What was in there with Rafe?

"Rafe!" she screamed.

Whoever looked out of the tower was deeply silent, yet she felt its eyes upon her.

Was a lunatic housed in there? Chained with the stoutest iron, caged within a cage within a cage, never to escape? Was Rafe its caretaker?

A roar broke forth that shook her to her knees.

"Who are you? What are you?" Veronica's despair echoed out unbidden into the air.