The Solemn Bell(3)

He was thinking like a desperate addict, not an intelligent, capable man. Dragging himself to his feet, he walked a few paces alongside the stone wall. It was solid as far as he could see. Eight feet high. Ivy-covered. He couldn’t scale it, but there was a beech branch hanging just low enough that he might find a way in from above.

He hadn’t climbed trees since he was a boy. He was in no shape to do so now, but Brody was determined to get over that wall. A perfectly good manor house waited on the other side, and, if not a doctor’s residence, he could surely find something useful in there—a forgotten bottle of whiskey, perhaps. Anything to numb the pain.

Brody lifted himself onto the tree limb. It danced in the wind, making his stomach churn. He inched out, white-knuckled, toward the stone wall. When he thought he could clear the gap, he slid down foot-first until the toe of his boot touched the top of the wall.

From there, he straddled the stone wall, peering down into the forecourt. Mostly grass lay below, and some bushes to cushion his fall. Brody sank down into the wet shrubberies with hardly a groan. If he ever became hard-up for money, he might earn a living as a burglar. At any rate, he’d made it to the other side of the gate. Nothing stood between him and the house now.

He limped across the forecourt, stopping only once to be sick in the bushes. The stone manor was shuttered. Ivy clung desperately to the walls, as if it was the only thing holding the old pile together. There were lots of chimneys, but, regrettably, none of them smoked. The entire property looked abandoned, and well on its way to becoming derelict. A shame. With a little work, the place could be a real charmer.

Brody climbed the slick stone steps to the front entrance. Ivy had intruded there, also, spreading its bare, brown fingers across the doorway. He pulled some of it away. No one had been in the manor in a very long time. Brody’s heart pounded at he twisted the knob and heaved the heavy, wooden door open.

The hinges screamed, but swung wide. Wind from the storm outside blew dust and old papers across the filthy floor. Coughing, Brody slammed the door behind him. He squinted in the dark. The place was wired for electricity, judging by the lamps overhead, but he didn’t bother trying the switches. For once, darkness was welcome.

He fumbled his way through the hall, careful not to touch anything, lest it crumble to dust in his hand. He walked until he reached a long, oak-paneled corridor. Normally, he would have been curious to know what the rest of the house looked like. That night, he just wanted to find a place to be sick in peace.

Brody ducked into the first open doorway he saw. It led to a drawing room, though the space had seen better days. Faded wallpaper fell away in sheets, and the heavy draperies were moth-eaten and full of holes. He sliced his way through the cobwebs toward an upholstered sofa at the edge of the room.

It would do for a night. God knows, he’d slept in worse places. After testing his makeshift bed to see if it was sturdy, Brody sank down into the sagging cushions. Dust billowed around him.

Damned fool. He should have at least kicked the dirt off first.

He coughed and choked, but coughing hurt his ribs, and choking pained his raw throat. His stomach lurched and the room swayed as his vision dimmed. Brody reached out blindly into the dark, his fingers finally finding their mark—he shouted in agony, and then got sick into a vase of dead flowers.





CHAPTER THREE





She heard the commotion coming from the drawing room upstairs. This wasn’t the first time someone had broken in, though past intruders had typically been looking for private, disused places to make love with their sweethearts, not to burgle or vandalize her home. But, from the noise this one was making, Angelica feared the worst.

Usually, she kept to the kitchens, and the young lovers kept to the rooms upstairs. In all the years she’d been alone in the house—to her knowledge—no one had ever discovered her. She felt certain that, if they had, someone would have come for her by now.

Thankfully, no one ever came.

Angelica had become a master of keeping to the shadows, and, ironically, remaining out of sight. She knew exactly which stair creaked. She knew precisely where to tread so the carpets muffled her footsteps on the old, worn floorboards. She kept the drapes drawn, and never burned the lamps. Darkness was her world, and whoever wandered the rooms upstairs surely stumbled in the absence of light.

Darkness would hide her from the intruder upstairs. Most likely, he merely sought refuge from the storm. He would be gone by daylight, or sooner, if the weather cleared. Until then, she prayed that he wouldn’t come down to the kitchens in search of food. There was precious little of that anyway, but it was harder for her to hide with someone opening cupboards and rummaging through the larders. If he were to switch on the lights, then there would be nothing to save her.

The shadows were both her friends and her enemies—her one advantage, as well as her greatest weakness.

Angelica tried to block out the sounds coming from upstairs. In her world of quiet darkness, a whisper might as well have been a scream. Listening to some strange man—she knew it was a man by the weight of his footsteps—overturning furniture and getting sick in her mother’s favorite room was torture on her already raw nerves. There would be no sleep tonight.

She tossed and turned on her pallet by the stove. It was the only warm place in the house because she dared not light a fire.

Fire was something she feared more than anything—even more than the asylum. If her house went up in flames, she would not make it out alive. There would be no one to save her.