Darker Still Read Online Free

kind and engaging enough…
    I tell you, there was something knowing in Mrs. Northe’s eyes that went beyond mere hospitality. It was as if she saw something I couldn’t understand. In that moment, I had the distinct sense that being acquainted with Mrs. Evelyn Northe would be one of the most important things ever to happen to me.

June 6
    My life shall never again be the same. Something is irrevocably changed. But, alas, let me start at the beginning and not skip over how the day began. I’m told I’m good with details.
    How is it that, in one mere day, Mrs. Northe and Maggie have come to feel so much like family? Despite any social differences, we all fell in so naturally.
    Maggie is the sort of girl I always wished I had as a friend. At the asylum, I was surrounded by deaf and mute girls, as well as some blind ones. All of them were lovely, of course, but to be around a pretty girl my age, a girl of society in fine dresses and immaculate gloves…I almost felt like I could fit in among the world at large, a world where there is possibility .
    Mrs. Northe took me to the finest of teas downtown before insisting that she have me sit in a photography studio for a portrait session.
    “All pretty young ladies need a portrait to offer a beau,” Maggie explained. When I protested in clumsy signing that I’d never had nor would I ever have a beau, Mrs. Northe scoffed at me as Maggie fluttered around me, primping my dress for the photograph. I was set down in the vast room filled with drapes and milling onlookers and told to stay put.
    “I’ll not have you say such a thing. I had a premonition,” Mrs. Northe scolded. “And my premonitions are rarely wrong. I saw you teaching at a school with some handsome doctor looking in on you.”
    “Ooh!” Maggie cooed. “A doctor. That’s noble!”
    I smiled at the thought. I’d have to teach other unfortunates like myself, but I found I rather liked the idea. It sounded right. Perfect, in fact. I’d make sure other girls like me had as many books as their hearts desired and no one to tell them they were merely stubborn.
    Sitting for a portrait takes a great deal of patience, and I don’t think the gentleman taking it was very fond of me, for I have a hard time keeping my knees from bouncing. That made me wonder how long Denbury had had to pose for his portrait. How had he withstood it? And what would he look like in person?
    It didn’t help that Maggie kept trying to make me blush and laugh. Goodness, the girl does like to chatter. Thankfully, I’m a very good listener. Even if I could talk, I’m not sure I could have gotten in a word edgewise. She related every last detail she’d recently gathered about the goings-on of New York City’s foremost elite, telling all the juicy, amusing bits. I got quite a colorful education. Mrs. Northe didn’t weigh in for a second, so I assume the topics were of no interest to her. The Hathorns and the Northes seem to have different priorities.
    While we were en route to the Art Association, I confessed to Mrs. Northe that I wanted to know more about spiritualism.
    “It would only do to introduce you to one experience at a time,” she replied aloud to my signed inquiry as we jostled up Broadway, eyeing Maggie as she spoke. “It has been an intensely personal journey for me, and you must look at it the same way if you want to create a lasting experience of faith and belief. This is a concept I keep stressing to Margaret, but she won’t leave me be about it.”
    “I’m obsessed. I want to know everything there is to know about spiritualism!” Maggie cried, not realizing she was echoing what I had just signed. “I want to go to séances and talk to the dead. I want to comprehend that sort of power and then to wield it—can you imagine what you could do—”
    “For the last time, Margaret Hathorn, there is no power in spiritualism. And those who are interested in it for the sake of power quickly become my former friends,” Mrs.