CHAPTER 14.
The wind howled at my window like a furious banshee. Spring had come and gone, replaced by hot summer winds that whipped up dry soil and hurled it across the plains. Piles of the rich, black stuff seeped through every crack and crevice of my wooden house, often making breathing difficult.
Tonight, I tore strips of fabric and stuffed them into every crack I could find. I had just swept the floor and already there were small drifts scattered about like spilt coffee grounds. My back ached from the constant bending to scoop the dirt into a dustpan. “When will it ever end?” I lamented, watching the fire I made flicker and sway as the wind snaked its way down my chimney. “I should have stayed in merry old England.”
I always made jokes when frightened… or nervous.
Something about the wind made me skittish. I had been dropping things all day, breaking a teacup, and nearly swallowed a mouthful of nails I’d been using to hang some wooden picture frames I’d found in the cellar. They were rotten, with splinters and probably only good for kindling. I thought they were worth saving and sanded them down to smooth the rough edges and painted them a bright turquoise. I proudly displayed Eileen’s postcards and clippings from various magazines.
They served their purpose in sprucing up the place.
When I moved in, the house was in shambles. Miss Ellis may have run a tight ship where her classroom was concerned, but obviously considered housekeeping an extraneous waste of time. Dishes were piled up in every corner of the kitchen. Pots were left with burnt-on and caked-on food. Greasy plates were left to attract flies, while dust accumulated until it was an inch thick.
I think I spent two weeks just cleaning the kitchen.
In South Dakota, floors had to be swept twice a day. There was simply no way around it. And I had yet to make a dent in what passed as a parlor. Basically, it was a small sitting room with a battered velvet sofa and two rocking chairs she must have gotten at a church sale. The poor things had more miles on them than my cousin Gladys. And I only say this because when she married, she was rumored to have been around the block. Whatever that means. I only repeat what was bantered over polite cups of tea.
I didn’t care about the furniture and left it covered in sheets. The bedroom was the focus of my attention. I only needed one room, anyway. There was a narrow wrought-iron bed, dingy quilts, and sheets that still bore a trace of Miss Ellis’ lemon verbena soap. I set these aside and made my own from two large pieces of muslin stitched together. I made the pillowcases, knitted the lace to trim them, and scrubbed the quilt until the water ran clear.
I strung up another quilt and used it as a curtain. I think after all of that I was too tired to make them. Teaching was exhausting. There would be days where the boys tormented the girls and vice versa. Enforcing discipline was becoming a problem, and I had no idea what to do about it.
“I wish someone would tell me how to handle a fourteen-year-old boy,” I grumbled, as I leafed through a book of poems I was thinking about incorporating into my lesson plans. Edgar Allan Poe was one of my favorites. Full of melancholy, to be sure, but illuminating. Would my students welcome a foray into the literary unknown?
Uncertain about how they would receive Mr. Poe’s thoughts on death and moral decay, I set the volume aside and chose Walden instead. I prepared a lesson plan, tucked it away, and prepared to do something I had been putting off for a week.
The laundry.
Sheets and petticoats went into a large pot I filled with boiling water and soap shavings. The trick was to let them soak for as long as possible before giving them a good scrub. I’d let them soak while I swept the floors and washed windows. My days off were very productive. Not to mention hard on my back.
My mother used to say it got easier as you grew older. Now that I was twenty, I decided it was just the opposite. I suspected some damage had been done when Anjuli threw me to the floor and lifting Colonel Havelock for his sponge baths. Mr. Anson had been the most indolent man alive when it came to lending his assistance. He’d stand there with his arms behind his back as I pleaded for his help.
“You are more than capable, Miss Gibson,” he’d say, making no attempt to hide his disgust. Colonel Havelock often soiled himself and everything he wore would have to be discarded and the colonel bathed. Sometimes a sponge bath was not sufficient to rid the man of the pungent odor of bodily wastes.
“I shall be in the gallery if you need me.”
“I need you now!” I shouted after him, to no avail.
Once, I doubled over in excruciating pain after I pulled a muscle in my back. I was forced to lie in bed for two days. Mr. Anson had no choice but to tend to the colonel. I don’t think I ever fully recovered, suffering from a sore back whenever it rained. The pain was especially acute if I carried heavy objects. But there was really no choice in the matter. There were no servants out on the plains, and the sheets must be washed once a week.
And after all the rinsing and the wringing, I had to lug heavy baskets of still-soaking laundry out to the line in the back of the house. I don’t know who installed that torture device, but the thing was nearly fifty yards away and hard on feet that stood at a chalkboard all day.
“There has to be a better way to do this,” I muttered, loading up the basket for the first trip. By the end of it, I’d worn a path clean through the short blades of grass sporadically dotting my property.
I was petite and had to use a stool to reach the line. My pupils tell me Miss Ellis was quite a large woman, at least six feet in stature, with a disposition to match. “Did she hit you?” I asked, appalled.
“Well,” one of them said, gladly accepting a lemon drop I handed out after earning an exemplary mark on a spelling exam. “She was as tall as my Pa. And he’s as tall as a tree.”
“Tall as a tree,” I grunted, struggling with the first sheet. “Why am I not surprised?” I pinned and smoothed wrinkles as I went along, stretching the fabric as if I were covering a drum. I’d iron if I had to, but really didn’t want to go to that much trouble just so I could sleep in a clean bed.
I had no quarrel against wrinkles.
The stool wobbled precariously beneath my slight weight, and it was then I thought having a husband might prove useful. But that ship had sailed, unfortunately. I was not considered a great beauty with my dull brown hair and eyes. I had one of those short, rounded noses. Freckles scattered all about as if someone had thrown a handful of dirt at me, and I never washed it off. My ears were too small.
And my lips!
Many a cruel remark I’d received because of my mouth and the way it was shaped. It was either too wide or too narrow, depending on how much wine you’d had at supper. Colonel Havelock had been most blunt in his assessment about my lack of pulchritude.
“You’re ugly,” he snickered one day, about a week after I arrived. “Has no one told you this? How many mirrors have you cracked, girl?”
By now, having heard such disparaging observations from my aunt and even Joshua on occasion, the blow was lessened somewhat by the fact the colonel was obviously senile and his opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. “I am well aware of the fact I am no beauty, Colonel. But thank you just the same.”
Not to be deterred, the colonel also insulted the way I wore my hair, saying I could do better with a mop. He insulted my uniform, the way I walked, and even advised me to ditch the spectacles.
I was practically blind without them.
“No man wants to look at those bottle glasses!” he hurled spitefully. “And do something about—”
That was the first and certainly not the last time he molested my person. I was shocked after he touched me. Then I was offended. And finally, I was outraged.
How dare he?
Mr. Anson was of no help, finding it amusing the colonel still thought about things like that. “How can you laugh?” I choked, having resolved to wear as many layers as I could. “He’s a dirty old—”
“Miss Gibson,” Mr. Anson said contritely, but not really. “Do you really think you’re the first girl he has assaulted that way? He pays your wages and will gladly find another if you do not go along with it.”
“Then please do so. I’m tired of being pawed.”
Mr. Anson’s grin slid off his face. “You’re not serious!”
“I most certainly am,” I shot back. “Either tell it to keep his paws to himself or find another who enjoys being treated as if she were his wife!”
“Colonel Havelock never married!” Mr. Anson huffed. “Never saw the need.”
“Well, I suggest you go out and find one. Perhaps that is the problem. He is confused.”
“Finding a replacement will be extremely difficult.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
Mr. Anson never saw fit to explain, though I did receive a slight adjustment in my salary.
For my… trouble.
I think that was when I began plotting my escape. I just wish I hadn’t abandoned Anjuli. I thought of her often, wondering how she died and how she became trapped in that attic. I had read about how some spirits feel as if they’d died before their time and linger because of something left unfinished.
If Anjuli had been murdered or died violently, then she was truly a restless spirit. And if her murderer had gone unpunished, even more so. I once asked what happened to her, and she wouldn’t answer. With the sari tucked safely away and England thousands of miles across open land and sea, there was nothing I could do to help her.
“I am so sorry,” I’d say after finishing some mundane chore around the house. It was pathetic and downright cowardly of me to leave her, knowing full well she hadn’t died peacefully in her sleep.
As I strung my sheets out on the line, I feared something horrible had happened to Anjuli. Whether it was by the colonel’s hands or someone else, I felt she had been murdered.
Call it a feeling. One of those “gut” things people often speak about when they sense danger or something bad is about to happen. For me, I think standing in the blistering sun stringing wet sheets all day might have done more harm than good.
Shortly after I took up residence in Miss. Ellis’ house, I began to see things. I’d see things that weren’t there. That couldn’t possibly be there. I’d see shadowy figures of people in Regency dress and men in scarlet regimental jackets.
Just like the one the colonel was so determined to find.
When teaching, I would see them. I’d be at the chalkboard and see black, shadowy things crawl along the ceiling. I was more bewildered than anything else. How could a haunting follow me? Briarwood Hall was indeed haunted. But now it was as if the shadows that lurked in the attic had traced me to South Dakota. I’d heard the Indian reservation had people who could cleanse your home of restless spirits. As I pinned the last sheet into place, I turned and saw it.
Slithering along the high blades of wild grass was a long black shadow. It stalked me as if it were a snake, its eyes red within a formless shape. I backed away slowly as it approached, feeling my time was short. “Get away!” I yelled, throwing the laundry basket. It laughed as the basket went straight through it; the laugh was an ugly hissing sound.
Then it pounced, catching me around my throat as it squeezed the life from me. I couldn’t breathe as invisible hands clenched my windpipe. I kicked and scratched at something that wasn’t there, screaming for someone to help me. Black dots swam before my eyes as I felt myself slipping from this realm and into the next. I fell into a world that was so terrifying and so completely devoid of human compassion that I wept for my mother.
What I found instead I would carry with me for the rest of my days.
