The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Paranormal Romance

Forty-Nine

Veronica stepped through the French doors to the back yard. Though it was more then she could bear, she had to see for herself about Mr. Croft. She went around the tower and looked down the lawn to the place she'd left him that night, and saw, indeed, that his body was gone. The grass in that area was dark where he had fallen, the ground strewn with ragged bits of cloth. The breeze rolled his stovepipe hat over the lawn toward her. Feeling sick, she backed away. Her foot fell on something hard. It was Mr. Croft's half smoked cigar. Fearing to step on a bone, or some other part left behind by the wolves, Veronica hastened away from that place.

Veronica was running back to the house when she saw Jacqueline marching toward the woods. She was wearing a black dress and a black ribbon in her hair.

Veronica checked an impulse to call out, and walked nonchalantly behind the curve of the tower to observe where the child went. There was that weird sense of a tap on the shoulder again. Hooking her fingers in the ivy for support, she leaned back and looked up the side of the tower.

Directly above her, the window of the beast spilled over with darkness. She swallowed hard. Her stomach felt like lead. The bars had been twisted out. The window gaped open, the red ivy leaves ruffled around the hole like the ragged edges of a wound.

Stunned, she turned away. Rafe would explain. He was going to explain. She prayed he would tell her that the beast that had raged in the tower was not him, that that black wolf in the garden was not homini lupus, not a wolf man, not him.

A snatch of song floated over the air from the lilies around the well.

Green grow the lilies, oh, bright among the bushes, oh...

The voice had a sob in it.

Veronica crept towards the woods and entered the trees. Jacqueline was sitting above the wishing well hanging one of the white china dolls from the birch branch that stretched out over the water. Veronica crept closer and hid behind a tall bush above the mossy hummock so she could see down into the well, but Jacqueline could not see her.

The doll was reflected in the still surface of the pool. And below that, in the murky depths of the spring, other dolls floated like little drowned corpses, their white china faces staring up at the sky. The stones that dangled from their ankles had been heavy enough to sink them, but not out of sight. Like little lost souls they looked, souls of lost children, so many vulnerable orphans.

Jacqueline leaned over and stared into her reflection. She passed her hand over the water, dripping beads of blood into the well from a cut in her palm.

"Sylvie, Jacques is to join you now. He's hidden in a leafy fort. I covered it with juniper limbs and rose briars. That way they can't fetch him out and lock him away forever in a silver coffin like they've done to you."

Jacqueline stroked the dangling china doll with her finger. "Jacques, Miss Everly saw you with Mamma. That means Mamma's got you."

Jacqueline's face was wet with tears and she lowered the doll to the rim of the well stones. Once its head was submerged, she bent toward the water and blew a kiss.

"That's for you, Jacques. The waters of the magic wellspring will wash the evil away." She blew another kiss. "Bye-bye, Jacques and Sylvie. Bye-bye." She began singing again. "One is buried under the stones, three are buried beneath the tree, seven are buried in the well, the well below the valley, oh.... Green grow the lilies oh, Bright among the bushes oh..."

The spooky melody of the old folksong followed Veronica all the way back to the house, verse after verse, after verse.

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