I woke to darkness, more profound than anything I had ever known. Not a trace of light leaked through the suffocating black that greeted me from every angle. It was amazing that in the face of blindness, every other sensation grew stronger. I sensed a flagstone floor beneath me. It was damp from cold, the chill bleeding through my clothes into every fibre of my body. The air that hit my nose was dry and musty, tainted with the stench of death and rot.
Death and rot!
My heart raged into an erratic pounding.
The butler and footman. Sophia’s betrayal!
Where am I? What is this place?
I scrambled onto my hands and knees. A wave of pain crept over my skull, an intense throbbing that latched on to the back of my head. Something sour rose from my stomach. I toppled over and was sick, the fatty, acrid scent of bile everywhere.
My beautiful dress.
“Anna!”
I froze, momentarily shocked.
That voice
For a split second, I actually believed everything would be all right.
“Anna. Are you there? Is that you?”
“Mother?” Tears bled from my eyes. I wasn’t sure if they were from relief or despair that we were both trapped in here. “Mother, where are we? What is this place?”
“I do not know, my darling.” There was panic in her voice, but also a strange tone of acceptance. “I think it is a cell. There is a wall between us.”
I scrambled toward her voice, not caring that my wedding gown tore on the stone floor beneath me. I hit my palms against the wall. It was solid rock. Unbreakable. I traced my fingers along the stones, hoping to find a handle or a door.
Don’t be ridiculous, Anna. Cells are designed to keep their prisoner contained. There is no door.
I slumped to the ground, emotion pulling me under.
“Anna.” There was a sob in my mother’s voice. “My lovely girl, we have been fooled.”
“What’s happening?” I swallowed a shallow breath. I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs. The mindless terror had me clutched in its inescapable claws.
How had this happened? Where was Frederick? I was meant to be marrying him. To be a wife. Not a prisoner in a cell.
“Anna, I did try to get us out of here. Please forgive me. This is all my fault.”
“I don’t understand.”
My ears were ringing. The pain in my head threatened to toss me back into unconsciousness.
Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
“I have been so foolish,” my mother confessed. “Anna, Margaret Thronesby is the Roma Witch. This is her doing.”
“The what? Mother, please, you’re not making any sense.”
A gasp split the still air. My mother sounded like she was choking on her tears. “This has all been a ploy. Margaret and Frederick… they planned this.”
“Indeed we did.” The cold voice ripped through the darkness.
A sudden bloom of light ignited the dark, bringing my surroundings into relief. Margaret stood by the rusty cell bars, her right hand clutching a burning torch. There was nothing sweet or gentle in her expression. This was not the Margaret I had grown to be friends with. The woman before me was someone else.
Mother is right. Margaret is… a witch.
The Roma Witch.
Her delicately curved lips, which I had always envied, were now tipped in a sinful smile, her blue eyes burning like ice, her red hair an orange glow of fire. She was an angel of hell. A demon waiting for me at the gates.
I stared, horrified and still.
Margaret stepped forward, her cruel eyes never leaving mine. “Dear, poor, gullible Anna. You really should have listened to your mother and left Wolvercraft Manor when you had the chance.”
I felt something heavy press against my chest. Fear. It was paralysing me. “I thought you were my friend.”
Callous laughter erupted from her. “I was never your friend, Anna. Stupid girl. Do you really think Frederick could love something as small, weak, and pathetic as you? He is mine. We planned this together. Designed Wolvercraft Manor together.” Her smile dropped. “We were meant to be married and live happily together in our new home… but money became an obstacle.”
“You mean your lack of it,” my mother spat from her cell. “Anna, that is why we were dragged into this. Our fortune. That is what they want. They have planned this for months. Frederick found us in New York with the intention of bringing us to Ashvall Island. He is bankrupt, Anna. He needs our money.”
It burned me to hear those words.
The fortune I’m set to inherit when my mother passes. That’s all Frederick ever wanted.
Tears flowed angrily down my cheeks, fuelling my hatred.
Up until that moment, I’d hoped this was an awful ruse planned by Margaret. I’d hoped Frederick was ignorant of it, that he’d find me in this cell and save me and my mother. But that was a fantasy. His love had been an illusion. A trick. A deceitful, painful lie. He was the instigator of this cruel plan. Him and his witch.
I stared at Margaret, wishing I could walk through the cell bars and strangle her. “Why us? Why send Frederick all the way to New York to swindle us?”
There were eligible ladies in England, even France, with exorbitant fortunes.
My vision wasn’t at full capacity, but I detected the smallest hint of cruel delight on Margaret’s face. “This isn’t just about money, sweet Anna. Sacrificing another witch during the full moon means a lifetime of wealth for my entire family for generations to come.” She patted her stomach softly. “And I really need to assure that my family are taken care of.”
I swallowed, wishing for the first time that my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the poor light. Margaret’s small baby bump was on full display. She must have been at least three months along. She’d hidden it so well with full skirts and corsets that no one had noticed.
I wanted to smack my head, or smash it against the stone wall.
I have been so blind.
I gasped in great sucking drafts. “I’m not a witch. Margaret, please. Let my mother and me go. This is madness.”
Her eyes gleamed like razors. “Not a witch? That’s where you’re wrong. Your mother is a medium. She’s the link to the dead. Powers like that do not come to any mere human. She’s a witch. And that makes you a witch, sweet Anna.”
“Stop calling me that.” My voice had risen to a shout.
Shout. That’s what I need to do.
“Help me, please,” I screamed so loud I was surprised my lungs didn’t burst. “Please. Someone. I’m in here. Please, help!”
Margaret heaved a bored sigh. “No one can hear you, Anna. Frederick and I made sure of that when we had this little chamber built into the house. Now, let’s not waste any more time, shall we?” She fastened her torch in a bracket on the wall, took out a parchment from her dress pocket, and through the bars flattened it against a small wooden step stool. A fountain pen and inkwell were already on the stool, prepared earlier. “Come here, Anna. You will sign this.”
I stretched forward to see what it was, then scurried back the moment I realised. “No. Never.”
A marriage certificate.
“Do not sign it,” my mother cried from her cell. “It is infused with magic. Once you sign, her spell is complete.”
Margaret slapped her hands on her hips. Something hot and angry flickered beneath her gaze. “This grows tiresome.” She waved her hand. The click of a lock resonated through the chamber, a cell door rasping open with screaming hinges.
Margaret disappeared into the cell. A moment later, she returned with her hand secured on the back of my mother’s head. The Roma Witch held a knife to Mother’s throat.
I struggled forward, my last grip on composure gone. The dress ripped beneath me, the fabric no longer soft and delicate to the touch but a hindrance to all my movements. My voice broke in a desperate cry. “No, please. Let her go, please.”
The blade was so sharp that already a trickle of blood seeped from my mother’s neck. It was a weapon unlike anything I had seen before. On any other occasion, I would have thought the green-jewelled hilt was beautiful, but all I could see now was a cold blade of steel that would rip the life from my mother.
Margaret’s eyes narrowed, the skin around them hardened by lines like cracks in paint. “Then sign the certificate.”
“Do not sign,” my mother snapped. She whimpered when the blade pressed more firmly into her skin.
It agonised me to see her like that. A beautiful woman, reduced to a captive at the whims of a crazy witch. And I was partly to blame. My ignorance had led us down this path. Mother had told me to dress quickly and meet her in the foyer. We could have escaped Wolvercraft Manor together, but instead I believed Sophia’s lie. I’d allowed myself to be deceived because of some stupid fantasy.
It’s all my fault.
Margaret tugged on my mother’s hair with impatience. Mother gasped from the pain, her long swanlike neck exposed to the blade.
I didn’t doubt Margaret’s motivation or her wickedness.
I grabbed the fountain pen with shaky fingers, and signed my name next to Frederick’s.
Margaret’s lips stretched into a cunning smile. Her voice was etched with sarcasm. “Thank you, Mrs Wolvercraft. A pity that you are now an orphan.”
Margaret dragged the blade across Mother’s throat.
I screamed, louder than I knew I was capable of. Loud enough to break glass. Loud enough to make dogs bark in St Albert Port. But it was useless. No one could hear me.
Surprise filled my mother’s eyes, followed by shock and agony. The colour in her face drained to white.
Margaret dropped her. She stepped away as my mother’s body sagged to the floor, her blood a thick, dark stream down the front of her gown. It pooled on the stones, flowing through the grating in a river of red.
Margaret wiped the blade clean on my mother’s dress. Then she turned her beady eyes, which had thinned into black slits, on me. “Oh, Anna.” She shook her head with pity. “How gullible you truly are. Your mother had to die. You couldn’t inherit her fortune if she lived.”
She swept down and retrieved the marriage certificate. “Now that you are Mrs Wolvercraft, your money belongs to Frederick. Everyone will be so saddened for Frederick when his young bride succumbs to illness, but they’ll rejoice when he finds new love and remarries. This was how it was always going to be, Anna.”
Frustrated and terrified all in that moment, I scrambled backward, unable to tear my eyes from my mother’s lifeless body, unable to look at the woman who I thought was my friend.
Margaret watched me with curious interest. “Three days until the full moon, little Anna. It will all be over then. You will be reunited with your mother.”
She’s going to kill me!
She took up the torch, giving me a final once-over. “That dress was supposed to be mine. A pity you had to ruin it.”
Her smile was like a grinning skull’s. “Pleasant dreams, sweet Anna.”
She slipped away into the dark, the light bleeding out.
* * *
I was broken. Torn.
I didn’t know how many hours had passed. Time was unmeasurable in the dark. Tears streamed from my eyes, so unstoppable that I imagined there was enough to fill Niagara Falls. I shouted for help, beat my fists against the walls, tried to break the lock on my cell door, but nothing worked. I was trapped in this eternal darkness.
My mother’s body had never been carried out. She must have been cold by now. I didn’t want to think of her that way, but the alternative was to imagine her alive and happy, her arms wrapped around me in a way only a mother’s love could protect you from the world. That just made me cry harder. I would never experience that again. I was alone. I would die in this place.
I drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes not knowing if I had actually woken or if everything was a nightmare. At one point, a horrible smell roused me awake. I gagged, choking on the odour that permeated the cell. There was no mistaking that scent. Death. It was everywhere. My mother’s body had started to decompose.
I crawled into the farthest corner away from where she fell.
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
My ignorance, my naivety, had been our downfall.
It had killed my mother.
It would kill me too.
* * *
It had to be at least two days since my mother died. I was deliriously hungry. I begged for death to find me quickly, to take me away and unite me with my mother. Every time I was close to losing consciousness, my groaning stomach dragged me back to the waking world. I couldn’t concentrate. Irritable, angry thoughts racked my mind. Sometimes I thought there were others in the cell with me. Voices spoke, but I didn’t have the energy to talk back. I wondered if it was death, if the Grim Reaper had arrived to take me away, but in the end there was always that empty darkness. There was no escaping the eternal black.
I realised this had been Margaret’s intention. To starve me.
Please, hurry it along.
It would have been far more merciful if Margaret had plunged that dagger into my heart. But that would have been too quick. Prolonging my pain was her way of rewarding her macabre appetite. I imagined her sitting in the drawing room, drinking tea, wondering if it was time to check on me and see if I’d finally succumbed to death.
When I next woke, a sliver of silvery light had penetrated the darkness. It had to be moonlight. It must have slipped between the stones in the wall. It was weak but still strong enough for me to see a small, sharp rock in my cell.
I crawled toward it, my legs trembling beneath me. I struggled to grab the rock at first. My mind just couldn’t seem to instruct my fingers to grip it. Or maybe my hand wasn’t listening. Finally, I clasped it.
I didn’t know what made me write it. Most likely delirium, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. I scratched the words into the stone floor, over and over again. The one time I would be heard. A final message. A reminder that I had been here and wouldn’t be forgotten.
In life I was afraid. In death I am fearless. They will all pay.
They will pay?
How will they pay, Anna?
How can you be fearless in death?
I was too tired to answer the question.
* * *
I woke grieving for the things that would never be. I would never see my mother again. I would never fall in love. I would never marry and have children. Frederick and Margaret had stolen my future, cut my life short. They would have everything that should have been mine.
Rage filled every vein in my body. It was the only emotion I could accomplish. I was too drained to cry, too exhausted to scream. All I had left was my anger.
I hate them.
I hate the baby that grows inside the witch.
I hate Wolvercraft Manor, a house paid for with stolen money, deception, and lies.
I hate the Wolvercraft family.
But most of all, I hated myself.
Too naïve. Too gullible. Too sweet and innocent to see what was really happening.
The end was drawing close. My organs felt like they’d shrivelled up inside me. My muscles were numb. My head pounded from pain.
Margaret has won.
I prayed and prayed to God to avenge me. To curse the Wolvercraft family and their legacy. Love had been my downfall. Now I wanted love to be a curse for the entire Wolvercraft bloodline.
Please, please, please. If you have any justice, send them the angel of darkness. Destroy them like they have destroyed me.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the sweet mercy of death to take me.
I will never forget.
And I will never forgive.