The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Romance Read online

  The world spun around, her stomach heaved.

  "Oh dear God, please help me!"

  She sank down and leaned her forehead against the battlements. Holding onto the wall as if the solidity of stone could save her, she entered the blackness.

  eee

  Cold air brought her back to the outer world. She rose stiffly. It was deep twilight. The moon, still so large and white and full, was slashing the birch trees with light.

  The bell began tolling.

  "Oh no. No!"

  Veronica peered over the battlements at the garden far below. There, the lilies glowed white as a phosphorescent wave on the sea of shadows that was the wishing well. A low wind blew over the land, rising out of the tide of encroaching night, like the high silvery howling of a thousand wolves.

  Thirty-Six

  Dread kept Veronica on the roof of the tower, high above whatever was about to happen this night.

  Shadows grew long across the grass. A white wolf slinked into the moonlight.

  She's come out now...

  Looking up at Veronica, the wolf's green eyes flashed. It raised its head to the moon and howled. This was no ordinary canine cry, but ethereal, sepulchral, the sound of death rising from the underworld.

  Its call trailing off, the white wolf lowered its head and gazed at Veronica again.

  Veronica felt as if her entire body rose up into the air. She tore herself away from the creature's sight, away from the certainty of where it was, and ran back to the stairway, down to the landing, and all the way back through the house to her rooms. Once in her bedroom she locked the door, and then raced to her balcony to the lock the French doors as well.

  Mrs. Twig’s voice rose up through the house. "Go away! Go away!"

  It was starting again. Veronica shivered in every atom. She froze on the spot to listen.

  A voice whispered through the door, yet seemed to be everywhere, coming through the walls, the ceiling, the floor.

  I will take back my children....

  “Never!” Mrs. Twig rasped out.

  The soft cries and groans fluttering around the walls of the house were heartbreaking and terrible. Veronica put her hands over her ears and begged them to stop.

  Yet, mingled with the falling scale of other voices humming that ancient tune that so easily stole her will, came the voice of the lady in yellow.

  You are wicked. Wicked to keep a mother from her children, a mother murdered and buried alive in her grave.

  Mrs. Twig's voice rose up through the house. “You will never cross this threshold. I know you, Sovay Lembron de la Flamme. In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone!”

  For a long moment, emptiness hung in the air. Had naming the ghost sent it away?

  Veronica tiptoed across her room to a window, opened the curtains, and peered between them to see who, or what, came out to the lawn. The sky was black and dusted with stars, the moon bright between the horns of the tapering yew trees above the ruined chapel.

  The lady came out from the shadow of the house, dragging the heavy train of her yellow gown behind her. She turned to look up at the tower. Raising her hands to the heavens, she appeared to speak, but Veronica could hear no words.

  The entire earth seemed to howl, the moon, the trees, and the grass vibrated with the cries of the wolves.

  The lady lowered her arms, grew still, and gazed directly at the window where Veronica was watching. The twigs on the lady's hat trembled. Her eyes bled. She pointed her finger at Veronica. There was a jolt.

  Stifling a scream, Veronica fell back. Feeling slightly dazed, she crept to a different window, and peered out between the curtains.

  The lady in yellow was weaving the air with her hands. A breeze blew up, puffing under the skirts of her gown. As she raised her arms to the moon, a powerful wind, carried her into the air, blowing her higher and higher, until the darkness opened, and she was gone.

  Veronica felt weak, as if her very essence had been sucked out.

  Thirty-Seven

  A melee of shrieks and cries 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. Little juddering laughs echoed out, followed by the sound of children weeping.

  Sweat trickled down her sides. She closed the curtains and hung her head.

  God have mercy!

  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.

  Covering her head, she ran into her room and fell to the floor.

  "Ah! Help me!" she screamed.

  Teeth were in her hair, jerking her head back, the long snout seeking her throat. Expecting at any moment to be ravaged, Veronica 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 pounded, but the weight lifted off.

  "Oh my God," she kept muttering under her breath. 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?

  Still shaking, Veronica rose 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 fright, she'd torn it herself.

  Veronica crossed herself. But maybe the crucifix had saved her. It must have.

  A howl echoed from somewhere inside the house.

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

  She grabbed a candle branch and raced to the twin's rooms, reeled from one bedchamber to the other.

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

  The howl had come from upstairs.

  The beast must be looking for the children.

  Listening intently for wolf sounds, she went back out into hallway, and strode toward the gallery that looked over the vestibule. Her harried reflection in the 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.

  She paused.

  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.

  Veronica wavered through the house. Her candles were the only lights. Even the embers in the drawing room hearth were dead. Where had they all gone? She thought of the tower. Could sounds carry that far?

  Veronica wandered to the small conservatory with its tea table, to look out at the marble terrace. Her candlelit reflection in the glass obscured her view. She put the candles on the table, went to the French doors and cracked them open to a blast of fresh air. The night was clear, the moon hard-edged and bright.

  A pale yellow light was glowing near the wishing well, taking the shape of Lady Sovay holding the hand of a child with white blonde hair.

  Closing the doors behind her, Veronica slipped outside. She hurried closer to the glowing figures, then stopped to observe.

  Sovay was lookin
g down at Jacques. He returned her gaze with eyes of wonder. When they got to the lilies, Sovay turned like an automaton, pulling the child with her to the well.

  Veronica waited for a flash of yellow in the birches. When nothing happened, she took a deep breath, slipped softly over to the lilies, and stepped onto a flat mossy stone at the edge of the water. The moon was reflected in surface of the well like a coin at the bottom of a fountain. Beads of red liquid floated over the reflected face of the moon, slowly coagulating. Like blood. And submerged below the moon and the blood, were dolls.

  One of the dolls was looking up, its painted mouth slightly open as if it were about to speak. Her nerves sharp as needles, Veronica scanned the moon-washed birch grove for a glimpse of Sovay and Jacques moving through the trees. All she saw was the tomb.

  The large rock at the head of the wellspring was streaked with dark fluid. Not wanting to accept what must be going on at this wishing well, Veronica stepped back into the yard. The bare trees swaying in the wind increased her sense of foreboding. She hastened back toward the house, to the wide-open space of the forecourt.

  Why had they left her alone?

  The frail, hollow choir of the wolves rose up, taking on harmonies, filling the woods and the fields with unearthly music. Veronica spun around. Backlit by a huge, glowing moon, the tower loomed up like a rookery of witches, its veils of red ivy lurid in the night.

  Was that where everyone was? In there?

  But she'd just seen Jacques with the lady in yellow. She didn't like it. Her superstitious side was raising the alarm.

  And where was Jacqueline? With Mrs. Twig? Where were they?

  There was one other place to look. She dreaded the thought, but, there, in the moonlight with the wind and the wolves and the lady in yellow, Saint Lupine's seemed a more likely place for them to go, than the tower.

  The hinges of the gate screeched as Veronica pushed it open. She ran down the dark road until she saw the two white standing stones softly shining amongst the murky tangles of the hedges. Steeling herself against the fear that gripped her with an iron hand, she passed between them to the path.

  It wasn’t long before the bushes opened to the clearing. With the large, bright disk of the moon floating behind the spire and its yard of crooked graves, Saint Lupine’s looked like an engraving in a book of ghost stories. Shadows flitted with moonlight. The stained glass windows glowed from within.

  Though she needed to go inside to see if the twins were there, Veronica felt physically unable to enter the clearing. Prickling skin, legs like lead, and intense watchfulness signaled the presence of a power she dared not cross.

  She might have to wait until sunrise to see if the twins had spent the night in the church. If they had... well... what would she do?

  The moon rose higher, leaving the earth in deeper gloom. Someone was coming over the hill just as Jacqueline had done that day, from the direction of the forest. His tall, thin blackness told her it was the priest. He carried by its ears a white hare, and began moving with it among the gravestones, muttering to himself. She watched in horrible fascination as the priest laid the hare on a sepulcher. Then, moving in a grotesque, spidery dance, leaping and jumping with his arms waving above his head, the priest began to howl.

  Veronica's teeth chattered with revulsion. She was about to get out of there when she saw the ground opening up, and out of the graves poured spirits. And faster than thought, the misty shapes of men became a swarm of white wolves. Snarling, raving, yowling, hackles raised, they roiled around Father Roche like demons out of hell.

  Unable to tear her eyes from this unspeakable vision, Veronica slipped behind the low hanging branches of an oak tree.

  The light in the stained glass windows of the church grew red. The door opened, and out came a tall, slender lady in a sparkling yellow gown, her pale hair shining to her knees. Her crown of birch twigs shivered as she floated over to the graveyard and stole in among the headstones and the wolves to take the hand of the waiting priest.

  Wolves paced around the lady, sniffing her skirts. It was Saint Lupine brought to life!

  The priest held up the lady's hand as when commencing a minuet, and pulled her in amongst the headstones. Round and round they danced, round and round, to the wild, ferocious singing of the wolves.

  Veronica's vision shifted, and it seemed that no hare lay dead upon the sepulcher, but a small child. Hand flying to her chest, crushing the silver crucifix to her heart, she gasped sharply.

  The wolves went silent, and dozens of red eyes focused on her.

  Veronica backed into the oak tree and reached for a limb above her head. Grasping the branch, her feet scrabbling for a purchase on the rough bark below, she swung herself up just as, fangs bright with moonlight and eyes filled with blood, a silent wave of evil poured toward her.

  Screams stuck in her throat, lungs burning for lack of breath, Veronica reached higher. Just as she her hands went round another branch, a snarl rasped up her back. Something was pulling her down!

  Hands slipping, she screamed and flailed for the next limb over. Shoes slipping, she threw herself onto the yard-thick branch, grabbed a spray of smaller branches, and hooked her fingers amongst the twigs. She heard a tear, felt her skirt being yanked away. Thank God her grip was firm! Dark music seemed to rise up out of the earth, to vibrate into her mind, stealing her urgency, her energy, trying to loosen her hold on the branches.

  She looked down. She wasn't high enough. Just above the hedge. In the fringes of the bushes just below, the wolves were gathering. Snouts lifted, sniffing the air, eyes glittering up at her, they were converging. Growls rose up, panting sounds, like hunger.

  She needed to get higher. Higher. Higher.

  The sight of wolves fighting over her skirt, playing tug of war with it, almost sent her reeling. With a loud cry, she reached for that higher branch and heaved herself up. Standing on the heavy limb, well out of range of the wolves, she watched more of them pace around the tree. Some stood there, staring, others drew away from where her skirt lay, torn to pieces, on the ground.

  A great clamor went up. It sounded like triumph.

  "Oh, God!" Her trembling was so severe, she wasn't sure she had the strength to hold on.

  Looking up, she saw branch after branch spiraling into the night sky. If only she could be up there! As it was, looking down... her stomach heaved, she head spun. She clutched for another spray of twigs to hold onto.

  A great, roaring outcry made the bushes tremble. The lady in yellow was coming over the grass. Floating, oozing lust in her low-cut gown, her crooked smile full of mockery increasing to laughter, she shimmered and shone until, no woman, a sleek white wolf crept low over the ground, slinking between the pack of coarser wolves, to the tree.

  Close to the trunk, just below Veronica's feet on the branch, the white wolf looked up with a gaze that was far too human. Its green eyes melted into wells of blood.

  Veronica’s joints buckled. Her head swam. Legs feeling like jelly, she laid her forehead on the rough bark of the trunk, and breathed. She instinctively knew she must not look at the red eyes glaring up at her. Though she was unable to hide her weakness, she must not give in.

  She looked up. Branches seemed to spin above her head. She reached up, then dropped her arm. She had no strength to climb higher.

  A thick white mist was coiling up the trunk of the tree. A glow of yellow of light, a pair of green eyes, a face, a mouth filled with fangs, opened an inch from Veronica's face.

  "Ahhh!"

  Veronica scrambled out onto the limb, backing up to where the branch thinned and angled downward. Paralyzed with fear, she stared in horror at the evil force. The serpentine creature's eyes fell on the silver crucifix showing through Veronica's torn bodice. The thing seemed to burn and recoil in terror. The face flashed human, angry, the eyes piercing Veronica's very soul before it dissolved into mist.

  Veronica straddled the limb, her shaking hands holding tight to the branches and leaves,
praying that God would not let her fall into that roiling mass of fur below.

  The bell...

  Growling sounds, as of animals running through the undergrowth, rushed around her.

  Everything went dark.

  eee

  It seemed forever passed before Veronica felt the damp air of dawn seeping through her clothes. Through the leaves, the road was just visible, a pale strip in the gloom. Moving dislodged her so that she fell down though the hedge to the rocky wayside.

  The sun coming up, and the birds trilling like mad, told her it was over.

  Thirty-Eight

  Veronica set off in a limping run back to Belden House, not stopping until she was in the forecourt. Doubled over with a stitch in her side, and hurting from her fall, she tried to sense if it were safe to go back inside. Everything was so quiet. The night was over. The nightmare should be over.

  She felt for her keys in her side pocket muttering a prayer that they'd not been torn from her now ragged remnant of a dress. Afraid of meeting Mrs. Twig at the front door in such a state, she hobbled down the side yard to the servants’ entrance and went quietly into the house.

  There was a ruckus in the corridor, Mrs. Twig shouting and Janet crying. Veronica moved stealthily around a corner and she saw the housekeeper at Janet’s bedroom door holding a silver platter with something bloody on it.

  Veronica’s eyes followed a row of spattered red drops on the floor. It was Tala all over again. Jacqueline in her hare-bloodied dress. The wolves!

  Grimacing, her heart thrashing like a stormy sea, Veronica rounded the corner and hurried back toward the main part of the house. Hopefully, Mrs. Twig hadn’t seen her.

  Back in her room she locked the door and put a chair against it. Then she opened one of her trunks and began filling it with clothes. The shock of what she'd just escaped overwhelmed her. She collapsed into the easy chair and stared at the ceiling.

  The clock chimed six.

  It was full morning. She was safe. Giving her time to plan, to figure out where to go.

  She lay down on her bed to rest for a moment, then couldn't keep her eyes open. Feeling safe behind her closed bed curtains, she put her pillow and coverlet over her head, and tried to pretend she wasn't there.