Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling Read Online Free

danger.” A wave of dread went through me, and as she continued I could only think of the man in black standing over Nanny Prum’s body, poised to lash out at Susannah. “Someone must watch over this family, now that dear Mrs. Darrow has left us, God rest her soul, and I do what I can in my way. I clean up afternoon tea, every afternoon tea, and one can’t help it if one sees something in the leaves.” She pursed her lips, and appeared for a moment wearier than I had ever seen her before. “Someone must watch over them, and warn them when necessary of the things that are coming. There is evil here. I did my part, I warned Nanny Prum, but she failed to heed my advice.”
    This was the longest conversation I’d had with the housekeeper in my nine months at Everton, and while her words were jarring, she spoke with a conviction that I could not ignore. “What did you tell her, Mrs. Norman?”
    â€œThere was a man in her life. Who, I’m not sure. But he meant her harm, and from what Susannah Larken saw, he meant her a great deal more than that.”
    â€œHave you told anyone else?”
    â€œWhat would be the point? Most people no longer believe.” Mrs. Norman suddenly took my hand and looked into my eyes. “Do you believe, Charlotte?”
    I thought of my childhood in India, of the holy men and mystics, and of my mother gasping for air in her sickbed. I had been alone with her when she finally died, my father shouting at the doctor just outside the door. I never told him about the man in black who suddenly appeared next to her bedside. The room was dimly lit, so I could not make out his features, but when he moved in to touch my mother’s body, I launched myself at him, kicking and biting with all my might. In the instant I reached him he was gone. My father reentered the room with the doctor a moment later and lost himself in his grief. There had been no time for the man to escape unnoticed and so I said nothing, thinking it all a dream until years later when my father and I were dining in the conservatory of our estate.
    One moment he was smoking his pipe, gesticulating wildly at the azaleas as he explained his feelings about a certain political party, a wreath of smoke around his head, and the next he was grabbing his chest and slumping to the tiled floor. I cradled him in my lap and refused to cry before the doctor could arrive. When the bell rang, my father’s manservant left us to answer the door, but I could sense we were not truly alone. The man in black stood by my side, wiping a bead of sweat from my father’s brow. I knew then that he had died in my arms.
    â€œWho are you?” I shouted at the stranger. He placed a gloved hand beneath my face and tilted it to meet his own. Even at such a close proximity his features were occluded by a perpetual shroud of gloom. I shrank back in horror and clung tightly to my father, but the man stepped away from us, the plant life in his immediate vicinity shriveling to brown decay and dust.
    When I was married I told Jonathan about what I had experienced with my mother and father. At first I wasn’t sure he had believed me, but then he wrapped his arms around my waist and whispered in my ear: “I believe that the world is far more complicated than we could ever possibly understand. Perhaps you saw a hint of something that most people aren’t meant to see. Death comes to us all, my love.”
    And so it did. The fire came for my husband only a few months later, and as he lay dying on the charred remains of our estate, I was met by the man in black for a third time. I was too weak to attack him or to even shout after him as he closed Jonathan’s eyes with his gloved fingers. But I did ask him a question: “Do you cause this, or are you simply a vulture come to pick at the bones of my life?”
    He tilted his head to the side, but whether or not it was some kind of response, I never knew. In