With My Own Eyes

  Quenby Olson

  World Tree Publishing

  With My Own Eyes is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Quenby Olson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0-692-04360-8

  ISBN-13: 978-0-692-04360-8

  Published in the United States of America by World Tree Publishing.

  First Edition: October 2018

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 WTEP B1841

  Dedication

  To Kay,

  for being both the writing devil and the writing angel on my shoulders.

  Chapter One

  * * *

  * * *

  My hand trembles, and so I press it into my skirts, grasping at the fabric there until I fool myself with the belief that I can manage my own limbs again. It's this moment I wait for above all others, the final drawing in of the curtain as a mangled prayer tumbles from my lips.

  For the last hour, a hundred pairs of eyes have been upon me, their owners' myriad shiftings and muffled coughs serving to highlight my every reluctance to open my mouth and speak. But I had no choice, and the words tumbled forth. Marta kept to her place in the wings, her chin raised so that the limelight illuminated the smooth, white expanse of her throat. She doesn't allow me to hesitate for longer than can be attributed to my own quirks of performance, a pause here and there as I allow the spirits to seek out their communion with me. But the voices are already there, always there, clamoring for the smallest window through which they can flood my every thought.

  It wasn't a grand performance. I look out at the faces before me, some of them still wary, even now at the end of my show. A few display wide eyes and open mouths, their own minds working to assign every word I've said to some trivial facet of their own life, making the mundane into a matter worthy of being dredged up over their next pot of weak tea with the neighbors.

  I close my eyes as the creak and whine of ropes and pulleys mingles with the hiss of the gas jets. There is applause then, along with the murmur of whispers and muttered conversations as my only encore before I'm cut off from view of the audience before me.

  "Not your best night, Thea," Marta chides me as she traces a path behind the curtain, the hem of her voluminous skirts brushing against it. Her hand shoots out and wraps around my wrist, and I take what measure of stability I can from her solid grip. A slight buckling of my knees and I find I can walk without assistance, but I don't pull away from her until I'm in the cold draft of the wings again, the smells of dust and moth-eaten velvet lending me additional strength. "You could've been more specific with that mother, the one who'd gone and lost her baby. Sounded more like you were pulling words out of a hat by that point."

  I shut my eyes for a moment, knowing the route away from the stage, towards the stairs and up to the apartments above. "I was," I admit.

  Marta's skirts rustle in protest as she squeezes herself into the narrow aperture that leads us to the next floor, her gloved hands hoisting up layers of silk along with the steel cage of her crinoline as if she were about to raise her own curtain and give us a show of scuffed boots over clocked stockings.

  "My head hurts," I say, but I doubt she hears me. As her gown scours the walls of their accumulation of grime and spiders, she patters on to herself about a low turnout and the dratted rain that's plagued us for a week straight.

  "A shower or two is all well and good," she says, turning the corner sharply at the top of the stairs before barrelling on to the next flight. "But folks tend to keep themselves safe at home when it looks like there'll be an ark floating down the Thames and bloody pigeons dropping olive branches on all and sundry."

  Down the corridor then, as I trail in her wake like a reluctant duckling. I begin to think she takes no notice of my lagging steps or the hitch in my breath as a rousing wave of nausea presses its weight on the back of my tongue, but as soon as I've unclenched my hand from my skirt to reach out to the wall for support, she turns with all the alacrity of one tuned to my every heartbeat.

  "What is it, Thea? What's wrong?" The concern in her voice is genuine, and the hands that grip me beneath my elbows are gentle in their power. Should the situation call for it, no doubt she could lift me up and toss me over her shoulder like a sack of flour. Marta Summerson seems to take an inordinate pride in having the build of a particularly substantial bulwark, while I've failed to add neither an inch nor a stone to my figure since my fourteenth year.

  I don't attempt to fob her off with something as trite as a smile or a shake of my head. She'll know the lie for what it is, and there'll be no end to her fussing and interference. "A headache, is all." I touch my temples, as if the simple gesture is enough to transfer the pain into the realm of mundanities. I could almost fool myself, I think. And yet the throbbing in my skull isn't something I can put aside with a dose of headache powder and a cold compress. It's different tonight, more than the usual nuisance that plagues me after every performance. And for a moment I experience a frisson of fear that I've let down my guard and allowed something to slip through. But the voices continue on with their inane chatter, as if there's nothing about tonight that should have me teetering on edge.

  "And that's what you get for not eating your food when it's in front of you." A click of Marta's tongue and she turns away from me again, continuing on until she's reached the door to my room and opened it with a twist of the knob and an additional nudge from her elbow. "You'll have your dinner, and you'll take in every morsel of it for a change. I've just kitted you out with all new gowns for the season and I'll not be trundling them back to the dressmaker's for alterations because you've taken it upon yourself to be delicate."

  I follow her inside. The room bears little in the way of alteration since I made my way down to the stage two hours before. The fire is brighter now, and there is, indeed, a small meal set out on a battered table that wobbles precariously as Marta—or rather the skirt comprising the sphere of influence around her—bumps into it.

  She bustles around me, gathering up a hairbrush and pins from the dresser, stockings and clean underclothes, and all before she begins to divest my wardrobe of half its contents, skirts and gowns tossed onto the foot of my bed with as much care as one would exhibit while searching through a pail of refuse for a missing bit of jewelry.

  "Mmph," she says behind me, as I finish washing the makeup from my face and rub my skin vigorously with a towel to dry it. "This will have to do, I guess."

  "Do for what?"

  Her mouth pinches shut, lines fanning out and cutting creases in the powder she laboriously applies no less than three times a day. "Eat your food," she says. Her gaze darts away from mine, and I wonder that she still possesses such little skill at deflection after all our years together. Or perhaps she believes me unable to read the less-than-subtle nuances of her gestures and expressions, that my abilities fail to extend beyond what I can better ascertain with my eyes closed and my mind focused elsewhere.

  I strip down first, tackling the long line of buttons that cut a path down the center of my bodice, peeling back the outer shell of indigo satin to reveal corset and bustle and wide-legged drawers. Marta begins removing the pins from my hair as I seat myself at the table. The aroma that reaches my nose as I lift the tin cover from my plate is a minor prophecy in itself that no less than half my supper will remain on the dish, congealed and uneaten.

  "I don't want to see Ryall tonight," I say, a second before I pick up my fork and stab a bite of something that might be mutton, if I'm being generous.

  Marta's hands pause on my head. She sighs, and then she plucks the last pin from my coiffure, shakes out the twists and curls it had taken her over an hour to arrange on my less-than-obedient hair, and sets to brushing out everything with her required hundred strokes.

  "Lord Ryall," she corrects me somewhere around thirty-eight or thirty-nine. "Without him, there'd be no pretty gowns, no coal in that scuttle there, and most likely nothing more than a crust of mouldy bread on that plate." Another tug of the brush and my head is yanked back from my fork, a chunk of carrot tumbling to my lap before my teeth can secure it. "And there could be more, you know. He wants to give us more, if only…"

  Her voice fades away, though the unspoken indictment on my behavior towards our blessed Lord Ryall lingers. I dig through the vegetables before me, a heap of overcooked lumps rendered nearly colorless by their time in the water, and scoop up a few chunks of what I assume to be turnips in an equally colorless gravy. "What else is there?" I wave my fork in the direction of the gown she has laid out for me. "There's something you're not telling me."

  "Oh, a thousand pardons!" She puts her hand to her chest, the other hand that holds the hairbrush gesturing outwards as she sketches a mock bow beside me. "Silly me, to think I'm allowed to keep a few thoughts to myself when you're not fiddling around inside my head."

  "I don't fiddle inside your head, Marta," I tell her around a mouthful of food. "I'd be too afraid of getting lost in there."

  She takes no notice of my comment, unless the increased vigor of her brushing is her punishment for my impertinence. I continue to eat until only scraps are left at the edge of my plate. As I push the dish away and wipe my mouth with my napkin, Marta braids and repins
my hair, twining a few tendrils around her fingers and prompting them with a muttered curse to hold their shape behind my ears.

  There is a bit of comfort to be found in having her take care of me so, as if I were still the child she sheltered beneath her wing, the orphan she groomed into the spiritualist, though she often laments the quality of my theatrics on stage. But while I sometimes suspect she thinks nothing more of my talents than an ability to pick at the tics of others and make educated guesses about them, I know what truly lurks in the mind of every man, and I know the sort of creatures clawing desperately at the fringes until someone—someone like me—slips up and allows them to come through.

  "Now, your dress," Marta says, and dutifully I rise from my chair, crossing to the bed in stockinged feet before she helps me into the gown of midnight blue silk. "I'm not sure about this shade on you." Her remark comes before she rubs both of my cheeks with her thumbs, calling some color into my complexion. "Hmm, it was Lord Ryall's choice, so if he doesn't like it, it's on his head."

  Despite the food in my stomach, or perhaps because of it, I reach out and hold onto the carved oak of the bedpost as she fastens the minute buttons of the gown and makes multiple trips to the dressing table for earrings, combs, and a fan that she gives to me and then takes away before I've even a chance to wrap my fingers around the slats of ivory and lace. Once she's finished, I bend forward as far as my clothing will allow. My shoulders strain against their seams, my stays threatening to break as I suck in one deep breath followed quickly by another.

  "If you're going to be sick, don't get it on your hem."

  With the tip of my tongue, I lap up a bead of sweat from my upper lip. The saltiness of it does little to assuage the nausea that weighs thick and heavy in the back of my throat. And all around me, lending to my unease, a sudden and perverse mixture of heat and cold. The warmth from the fire and the stultifying armor of the corset fastened away beneath my gown combats with a chill that slides with all the delicacy of a single finger across the back of my neck.

  "Tell me." The words drop from my lips, somehow cumbersome on my tongue and yet able to sail through the air and towards Marta's ears. "No more subterfuge. Just speak."

  There's a clatter on the dressing table, the shuffle of objects as she seeks to give her hands something with which to occupy themselves. "There's someone Lord Ryall wishes you to meet. A friend, he says."

  "A friend of his or a potential friend for me?" I straighten up, waving away Marta's reply before she can even make it. "No, no. It's fine. I'll need my coat, won't I?" There was ice feathered across the windowpanes this morning, and I doubt we'll see a reprieve from the cold before the next month or two are settled far behind us.

  She approaches with my coat and all the other accoutrements necessary for venturing out-of-doors this time of year. "Are you sure you're well enough? A spoonful of tonic, perhaps? I'm sure we can be a few minutes late without causing Lord Ryall to fret too much."

  I pull on my gloves, stretching my hands inside the soft leather until one of my knuckles lets out a faint crack. The cold is still there, teasing the hairs around my head, drifting across my shoulders like a push of air from a window left open and unattended. "Best to get it over with," I say, and put on my finest attempt at a smile. "After all, rent is due. And these gowns, they won't pay for themselves."

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  * * *

  I'm greeted with all the pomp of an honored guest. My hat and gloves are taken from me, the snug, well-tailored coat with the little buttons that fight my cold-numbed fingers removed from my sight before another drop of melted snow can strike the foyer floor. There is warmth and light and an immediate offer of drinks and comestibles, yet I cannot help but feel like an imposter as Marta and I are ushered into the drawing room. For I am a performer, am I not? I put myself up for show and earn a wage in exchange for my efforts. But Lord Ryall steps forward the moment he sees us. Both arms are extended towards me, though one drops back to his side as he takes up my right hand and kisses the air an inch above my knuckles.

  "Miss Hawes." He raises his chin and smiles up at me before he again returns to his full height. A deft maneuver tucks my arm against his side, and I'm led farther into the room, towards the fire and the pulsing heat that I fear may send up a cloud of steam from the hem of my skirt should I move too close.

  Marta follows me inside. I hear the clink of glasses and when I turn to look back, she has a tumbler in her hand, a liquid the color of honey swirling in its depths. I make sure not to keep my attention from Ryall for too long. Even as I check my posture, the very tilt of my head, it's Marta's instructions before my first meeting with him that chime in my thoughts. I smile after he speaks, and I dip my chin slightly before giving my own answer in return.

  "I am well," I say, and take a breath when my expression becomes too fixed. I have learned not to give him the truth of how I feel, to tell him that I'm tired, that my head pains me, that I cannot bear to look into his face this evening. Instead, I focus on his hands, the sheen of his fingernails, the soft skin across his knuckles. And then I realize that the room has gone silent but for the loud crack and sizzle of a log in the fireplace, and I understand that Marta will try to leave me alone with him if I'm not careful.

  "There is color in your face this evening," he tells me, and I glance up long enough to see the light from the fire reflected in his eyes. "Have you dined already?"

  I nod, but behind me, Marta speaks up. "She could do with another morsel or two. I tell her to eat more, but you know how she can be sometimes."

  I remain still as he closes what little distance remains between us, his hand outstretched until it is on my sleeve, the fabric clutched between finger and thumb as if he's afraid the fibers are delicate enough to shred beneath his touch. And then his touch moves down, down to my wrist, his thumb nestling in the palm of my hand and stroking the skin there until it itches.

  "You need to take better care of yourself, Miss Hawes." Ryall's smile illuminates his face, and when he turns his head from the fire, the golden glow of the flames abandons his eyes, leaving me to face dual sparks of blue between dark lashes. "I would not wish to see you come to ill merely because there was some measure of neglect, something that could have been prevented." Another slide of his thumb against my skin and he releases me. A step back and his posture could indicate that he's no longer aware of my presence, all memory of me wiped away as he strides to the table near Marta and pours a shot of something for himself.

  "I wish it were under more pleasing circumstances that you were here tonight," he goes on, before he takes a sip and winces slightly with the first swallow. "It is my cousin, you see. Mrs. Trask. She's been…" He turns his glass in his hand, his gaze fixed on the remaining liquid as if he were mired in the task of reading tea leaves at its bottom. "She misses her son, I think."

  "He is dead," I murmur, the three words falling out on a sigh.

  Both of them look at me. Ryall's eyes in particular widen at my pronouncement. But there's nothing of the mystical about what I've said. Despite the riotous quality of his thoughts and the pall that clings to the shadows of the house—shadows I take care to avoid like piles of rotting offal in the gutter—it's nothing more than a simple matter of guesswork. For why else would Ryall have called me here—in a professional capacity, at least—than to traipse along the boundary separating us from the world beyond our own?

  A moment is all I would need, long enough to pull myself from the tangle of machinations inside their heads and allow the clamor of voices to slip in. I wonder then, as I sometimes do, if the drone of whispers lapping at my mind is one that I bring with me or if it alters as I travel from place to place. But they have always been with me, some days more quiet than others, and I tell myself that I have grown so much stronger in my abilities since I was a child. Only once before did I allow something—a spirit, a creature, a monster—to tear down the veil and slither through to our world. Only once, and I have sworn I will not let it happen again.