Read Online The Dark by Claire Mulligan - Free Book Online Page A

for the bible she has somewhere. Perhaps she will use it for letters. Her father always had a fondness for boxes, she recalls. There was a most delightful one he made for his cards. He showed it to her when she was a girl, just before his desertion. Within a secret compartment was the King. The Queen. The Jester with his pronged hat. Her father fanned the cards out, then plucked an ace from her hair, another from her sleeve. “Magic,” he said, and waited for Leah’s eyes to widen. “Don’t never be fool enough to believe that, Leah-Lou.”
    Pointless advice, Leah thinks as she puts the box on her dressing table, then settles for her nap. “Don’t marry Bowman Fish, the odious clod”—now, that would have been of use.
    She takes a draft of sleeping remedy, closes her eyes. But she cannot find sleep, not with the girls so uncouth and noisy below. Yes, much about her younger sisters needs improvement: their manners, their grammar, their reveal-all countenances. And their voices! Maggie’s has a country twang, like a banjo being plucked. Katie’s is a tremulous falsetto. At least both girls look much younger than they are, being sweet of aspect and small for their ages. Maggie could take the part of a back-woods innocent, what with her plump cheeks and candid brown eyes. That little held-back smile is a worry, however. It is as if she is too ready to be amused. As for Katie, turn her sideways and she might vanish. Otherwise, Katie favours Father, has his narrow, arched nose and thin lips. Such features should render her homely. They do not. Instead they lend her a distinct, unsettling prettiness, as if a grown woman has been packaged up as a child. More unsettling is that vacancy that sometimes comes upon Katie,as if she is looking at some knowledge beyond the ken of others. And her eyes. Violet in some lights, grey in others. Who has such rare-coloured eyes but shape-shifters, witches? Such, Leah fears, is what some cretinous fools might say.
    A bird smacks against the window. Another. Then a scrabbling. Leah starts up. Now the strangest sound: as if a pail of bonnyclabber is spilling on the floor below. She rushes outside. Sees the three girls hopscotching on the flagstones that lead to the foredoor.
    “How pale you look, Leah. What’s the matter?” the girls chorus.
    That rage. No predicting its arrival. Leah’s clenched hands grow hot. She breathes deep. “This ghost. He has been about for a time now. And I wonder. Truly. How does he intend to earn his keep?”
    The girls laugh at this, though Leah is not jesting. She treads back upstairs, leaving the girls to their skipping rhyme.
    “As I went up the apple tree
    All the apples fell on me
.
    Bake a pudding. Bake a pie
.
    Would you ever tell a lie?”
    A lie? No. The dead are not a lie. Leah hears them each time her fingers touch the organ keys. She hears them in the half-notes, which is, of course, where tragedy dwells. Indeed, when Leah sets aside her sheet music, when she plays without plan or intent, then the air near throbs with ghosts, their longings and regrets, their desire to speak. She wonders if, with some encouragement, the dead would do so, would actually speak aloud. At least the dead, unlike so many of the living, would surely know how to keep a tune.
    That night cold fingers press Leah’s cheeks. The raps sound all around her bed. She calls to the girls: “Are you safe?”
    “We are. Are you? What’s happening?”
    “I cannot say. I …” Leah reaches for the matchbox to light the candle. The box tips away. The lucifer matches skitter off.
    “
Quelle horreur!
” Lizzie shouts.
    Thuds and bangs and more callings back and forth. Leah joins inuntil she wearies. The girls seem to have no need of early-night sleep. Did she at their age? Indeed she did. Sleep was an escape from household drudgery, from Bowman Fish and his grunting demands.
    Leah wakes to a gauzy light. The girls are all heaped in Lizzie’s bed, are sleeping as soundly on