DRAKES FALL MANOR by Susan Buffum
Mr. Needy lives between the walls of our house. He says there are secret passages and narrow staircases allowing him access to every floor, every room from cellars to attic. He emerges from secret panels when we are asleep in our beds to prowl about in search of tidbits and odds and ends which he either eats or steals away, tucking things into the many pockets of his great frock coat. He uses a barrette of mine, stolen from a dainty porcelain dish atop my dresser when I was a mere four years old as a lapel pin. I’m fourteen years old now, a full decade having passed since he took it. The barrette is tarnished and the hinge is wonky but he cherishes it so I am disinclined to ask for its return.
I first saw him when I was still a small child. He was a dark shadow stitching the moonlight coming through my curtains one warm late spring night. I lay on my narrow bed watching him move back and forth across the pale beams of moonlight, unable to make out his features but thinking he was my father come to kiss me goodnight after one of his lengthy journeys and indecisive about whether or not to wake me. I thought I was solving his dilemma by abruptly sitting up in bed and crying, “Give us a kiss, Papa!” I only succeeded in startling Mr. Needy who in his haste to be away stumbled over my dollhouse wreaking havoc within that miniature microcosm with upset furniture and figures tumbled rudely from their beds as if some cataclysmic event had just occurred that would forever change the playscape of their lives.
“Blast and damnation!” came the curses from the darkness. It was hardly anything that would pass my erudite father’s lips. Therefore, I did what any small child would do when waking to find a strange man in her bedroom- I threw the covers aside and leapt out of bed, racing across the room, small fists flailing to pummel the figure cowering against the wall, pale, bony fingers scrabbling to find the secret lever that would open the panel through which he would make his escape.
I caught glimpses of him that night. He’d finally pushed me aside and made his escape. My mother, still struggling to find the left sleeve of her dressing gown, had found me kneeling in front of the wall beside my closet knocking on the paneling begging him to come back and play with me. Mama had called for Nanny who slept like the dead in the very next room, and demanded an explanation for my being out of bed and behaving like an inmate of Bedlam in the middle of the night.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Missus. It must have been the custard at dinner. Too rich for her, not settin’ well on her delicate belly. I’ll give her some bicarbonate of soda, rock her until she’s feelin’ more like herself and then tuck her up into bed. She’ll be right as rain soon, she’ll be. Say goodnight to your Mummy, Tessie, there’s a good girl. Nanny will fix you up good and proper.”
Nanny had stuffed a stocking in my mouth and paddled my bottom red as an apple then tucked me so tightly into bed I have been terrified of being restrained ever since is how Nanny fixed me up good and proper, if truth be told.
When Nanny had her heart attack in the orchard when I was eleven years old I may have taken a rather meandering route back to the house to ask Mrs. Mossman, the housekeeper, to summon the doctor. I believe it took me four hours, thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds to walk from the orchard to the service door at the rear of our house, a distance of perhaps five hundred yards. I blamed my tardiness on very short legs and very tight shoes that pinched and gave me an unusual gait.
Nanny was laid to rest in Portsmouth Cemetery beside her Talbot ancestors. I was the one who tucked the old feather duster into the casket, a little something to remember me by as she began her journey into the afterlife. How she had tormented me with that thing, waving it under my nose when she perceived me to be misbehaving, making me sneeze until my eyes and nose ran in equal measure. I made sure the tips of the feathers touched her nostrils before personally closing the top of the casket and giving it a gentle pat.
Only Mr. Salter, the elder, had seen me do it. He’d given me a solemn wink of a rheumy blue eye as I’d passed by on my way out to join my family who had given me a few moments to say my private goodbyes to my dear Nanny.
It was about that time that I first found myself face to face with Mr. Needy. Without Nanny’s rhythmic snoring from the other room I soon discovered I was an insomniac. As such, I was often wide awake in the dead of night when the rest of the household was sound asleep, dreaming of magnificent events that can never be, for the majority of us live only grandiosely in our dreams while managing to live merely mediocre lives while in our waking state.
I did not like being confined to my bedroom as if the house suddenly became off limits to my ambulating about in it after a certain hour every night. I had a curfew of nine o’clock by which time I was supposed to be in my room preparing for my nine thirty bed time. My mother, usually the only parent in residence with my father still an active and frequent business traveler, would come promptly as the grandfather clock at the end of the hallway would be striking the half hour to place a dry peck of a kiss dead center on my forehead and wish me a goodnight.
I shall pause here in my narrative to describe my home for then when I say ‘I dashed through the gallery connecting the main house to the north wing’ you will have a clearer picture in your mind as to my escape route. Drakes Fall Manor was built in the late 1870’s during my paternal ancestors financial zenith. The main house is a paean to architectural excess in the Second Empire style with a five story tower thrusting upward at the center of the façade as if the designing architect was overcompensating for what we shall euphemistically label his possible short-coming. The mansard roof is slate tile. Occasionally I will hear the slither of a loosened slate sliding out of place then, after a brief span of time, crashing through the thicket of thorny rose canes before thudding solidly into the mossy earth. I have seen them from time to time during my sojourns about the grounds jutting crookedly like ancient weathered tombstones behind the roses. If I stand by the old fountain, its basin cracked and full of the detritus of several autumns past, and turn my face upward toward the third story where the eyebrow dormers curve above the sightless stare of dingy window glass, I can locate the wounds from which these scab-shaped slates have sloughed away. There are wings to north and south, something builders seldom do nowadays in New England as our storms rush at us out of the north causing wood rot and weather damage, leaks around the windows and sagging foundations. The wings are connected on the first and second stories by means of twenty-foot long galleries lined with tall windows every four feet leaving wall space to hang rather dismal, glum-faced ancestral portraits, if one so desires. My mother’s family so desired. There are stern, somber, scowling faces, mostly male, expressing their displeasure at a child racing through the galleries from main house to wing and back.
This house has thirty-seven rooms on three floors, not counting what I refer to as demi-rooms which are not true rooms but merely pass-through areas or exceptionally large walk-in closets. By demi-rooms I mean the butler’s pantry which is basically a passage with a soapstone sink , cupboards, cabinets and counter space, that connects the kitchen from the formal dining room; or our dressing rooms where our clothes reside but we merely run into and out of them without lingering for extended periods of time. There are thirteen full bathrooms and five lavatories. On the third floor are servants quarters and storage rooms. In the tower on that floor is a wrought iron spiral staircase leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling that, when opened, reveals a tiny room, the trap door being in the center of its floor. Another spiral staircase leads up to the very top of the tower with its oval windows on all four sides. It is like being in the crow’s nest atop the tallest mast of a ship. You can see all the way to Heaven from up there, and all the way to the lake to the east, the river to the south and the town to the west. To the north is a dark forest and beyond the trees the majestic mountain upon which clouds frequently stumble in their journeys across the sky.
We have a ballroom, long unused, on the second floor in the south wing. It is a huge room full of shadows and echoes with a musician’s balcony above a raised dais at the far end. The balcony is too frail these days to support even a phantom’s weight and is therefore off limits, its narrow curving staircases at either end roped off with thick maroon cords. There are sheer curtains laced with cobwebs and furred with dust pulled back on each side of the balcony. In bygone days these curtains could be closed to sort of shield the sweaty musicians slaving away over their instruments from the elegantly attired dancers swirly in a myriad of billowing skirts and flying coat tails on the polished wood floor below.
I adore the kitchen. This is the cavernous room where our hump-backed cook stirs huge cauldrons of soup on a stove hot as Hades while half-pigs roast in the ovens beneath. There is a long, wide, scarred wooden table where she pummels pallid dough balls the size of human heads, beating them into submission before using a knife the size of a machete to hack off segments, dropping them into tin loaf pans then patting the dough almost affectionately before slathering on egg white with a shaving brush. Then into the ovens these loaves go, filling the house with the fragrance of baking bread. Nothing says home more to a hungry child than a thick slice of hot from the oven bread spread with yellow butter and smeared with raspberry jam full of tiny seeds that can be ground between ones teeth.
There is a matching carriage house, four stalls for horses, the bays where coaches once stood now converted for the storage of motor cars, the dirt floor stained with dark oily patches as if someone has snuck in and stuck daggers into the very hearts of these mechanical monsters whilst they slumbered. On the second floor is an apartment where our chauffer Lieb lives. He whittles and carves in his free time. His carvings are grotesque and disturbing- snarling trolls, frowning wizen-faced gnomes in peaked caps, gargoyles, satyrs, devilish looking beings with horns and hooves. If Mama ever saw these things she would oust Lieb. Papa has always been the shield between Lieb’s hobby and Mama’s discovery of same. He has whittled me charming little creatures to give my mother the illusion that he is a kind-hearted man, a gentle soul. I only know the truth of how things are with him because Mr. Needy tucked an exquisitely carved, nasty little rat-faced creature with long curved talons beneath my pillow one night. I recognized the work as Lieb’s by the curious pock mock he carves into the bottom of each piece. I hid the thing in the back of my bedside table drawer where no one ever looks because the only other thing in the drawer is my Lives of the Saints book with its gruesome images of suffering men and women, gifted to me by a nun who’d told me it wouldn’t hurt me any to strive to be more saintly in my behavior and attitude.
On the grounds of Drakes Fall Manor there are other structures such as a gardener’s shed, a gatehouse, a pool house and a shrine; but the shrine is empty, the niche that once held a statue now the home for a nest of field mice. There are red glass chimneys on tarnished brass bases with the pale waxy remains of candles gummed inside to either side of the niche. The ceiling of the shrine is painted a midnight blue with golden stars. The paint is faded and the stars flaking and peeling but still one can imagine being out in a field under a starry sky searching for the Star of Bethlehem to guide ones steps toward the Messiah. There is no Star of Bethlehem in our shrine. All the stars are the same. They do not even form a constellation.
There is a pool but the water is only two feet deep and resembles a Louisiana bayou swamp in color. I always run past the pool, terrified that alligators will lunge up out of the murky water to grab my legs in toothy jaws and drag me down into the muck to be devoured alive.
That said, I shall continue my narrative. It was about the time of Nanny’s demise in my eleventh year that I came face-to-face with Mr. Needy during one of my nocturnal perambulations through the corridors and rooms of Drakes Fall Manor. I had just finished enjoying a jam tart in the kitchen by the soft glow of a nightlight always left burning when, emerging from the pantry where I had rinsed sticky jam from the heel of one hand, I found a strange man bending over the table examining some crumbs I had not swept onto the floor. “What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, hands on hips. I thought it might be the new houseman Mama had hired, Westerman having abruptly handed in his notice of departure after Nanny’s funeral in which he duly noted that I was an intolerable and impossible child whose behavior he could no longer tolerate. As if!
The man slowly rose to his full height of perhaps five feet five inches. He was a skinny fellow, and as he turned toward me I soon saw why. He was skeletal- literally. His flesh was sere and clung to his bones as if he had been mummified without the wrappings. His thin lips were barely able to conceal his prominent teeth. His nose was collapsed and partially rotted away at the tip leaving him with huge nostrils that faintly whistled as he breathed. His pale blue eyes protruded from sunken sockets, his eyelids as thin as tissue and near devoid of lashes. He wore an old-fashioned frock coat with deep, flapped pockets, trousers, a white shirt yellowed with age and a blood red cravat wound about his withered throat. On his feet were old felt carpet slippers, much worn with small holes at the great toes all frayed about the edges. To me, he looked exactly like a corpse sprung to life from another age. My hands flew up to cover my mouth, to trap the scream that threatened to rush out on soaring wings of sound. I stared at him through wide disbelieving eyes, my mind momentarily stalled by shock.
“’ush!” he said, a bony finger rising to lie across his bloodless lips and yellowed ivory teeth. “I mean you no harm, Miss Tessie.” I shook my head ever so slightly. His pop-eyes held mine so that I was completely spellbound. “We’re old friends, you and I, ain’t we, Miss?” He nodded as he spoke. “I ain’t never done you a bit o’ ‘arm, ‘ave I?” I shook my head again. “I can trust you to keep a secret, can’t I?”
I slowly lowered my hands but my fingers curled into fists reflexively, just in case, and whispered, “Yes, I’m very good at keeping things a secret.”
“Good, because I’ve lived in this ‘ouse a good long while. I don’t want to be ‘avin’ to look elsewhere for new lodgin’s. I’ve grown accustomed to Drakes Fall ‘ouse. You mustn’t go tellin’ anyone that I’m ‘ere. Promise, Miss?”
“Do you have a room here then? I’ve been in every room but I can’t imagine which one could be yours.”
“I live in the walls, dear ‘eart.”
“Oh. Sometimes Mama hears a sound in the wall and she says we must have rats in the attic or cellars and she should have Westerman summon the rat catcher before we’re simply overrun. I hear you sometimes, too.”
He shakes his head, wispy dry hair the color of corn silk floating about his head. “Not me,” he says quietly. “The others.”
“There are other people living in our walls?” This is difficult for me to conceive of. One curious fellow who says he lives within the walls of our home is quite enough for a child’s mind to grasp. If you factor in others, it has the potential to derail logic and sense fairly rapidly.
“Not people, no. Now, don’t you go troublin’ yourself about them that don’t concern you. That’s my job, Miss. That you’ve seen me, that we’ve exchanged a few words between us, will be troublesome enough.”
“Are you a criminal then, hiding from the law? A fugitive? An escapee from Rockdale Penitentiary?”
“Nay, not that at all.” He looks appalled I should even think such a thing.
“Do you have a name I can call you by?”
“Nay, Miss. I don’t.”
I nod, and that’s when I notice my old barrette that has been missing for seven years hanging from his breast pocket. The metal is severely tarnished but the little amethyst gems gleam. He must have needed a stick pin for his coat and that was all he could find. “I shall call you Mr. Needy, if that is all right with you.”
“Mr. Needy,” he says slowly, as if sampling the name on his tongue like a fine wine. “Aye, that’ll do nicely, I should say.” He brushes the crumbs from the table into his palm then makes me a bow. “I must be off now, and you should be gettin’ on up to your bed to chase a dream.”
“Will I see you again? Are we friends now?” I ask, following in his wake as he heads through the butler’s pantry into the dining room.
He goes to the paneled wall beside the fireplace. It’s near dark as pitch in here but I hear a faint click, sense the movement of a panel swinging outward, pushing the air toward me. “Aye, Miss, I’m sure we’ll meet again, you and I.”
“Well, goodnight then, Mr. Needy.”
“G’night, Miss.”
And he is gone, leaving me alone in the dark dining room with my racing thoughts, aching curiosity, and my lonesomeness curling about my ankles like a tabby cat wanting to be picked up and held close.
Finally, I turn on the lamp, approach the wall and run my fingers all over the paneling as if I am blind and trying to read the flat wooden face of a mannequin, believing it has something to tell me. My left ring finger brushes the switch and the secret panels softly clicks open, exuding musty air with a vague hint of mold and decay from the darkness beyond. “Hello?” I whisper into the darkness. I lean closer and am startled witless by the appearance of a fierce dark face with a bone clenched in its jaw held tight by glistening brown teeth, red eyes gleaming above a broad nose. I freeze in terror as it drops the grisly bone so that it rolls toward my toes and stops dead. I glance down at the bone that looks suspiciously like a human humerus and the thought occurs to me that this situation is entirely humorless. I slowly raise my eyes to see the beast about to lunge, slavering jaws ready to tear out my throat. I have no voice. It is trapped like a cork in the bung hole of my throat.
The beast yelps piteously, when Father’s best silver-headed walking stick comes smartly down upon the thing’s skull with a loud crack. It whimpers and vanishes into the darkness. And then a pale, sere hand emerges from the dark to pull the door closed. As it’s about to shut a voice comes drifting out to me, “Be a love and dispose of that gnarly old bone, would you, Miss? And if you know what’s best for your continuin’ state of good ‘ealth you’ll not be tryin’ to follow me again.” The panel merges with the paneling, becomes invisible to the naked eye once more.
“But I want to go with you into the walls,” I say softly while nudging the bone with its glistening sinews and bits of pink meat with my toe. I want to explore the other side of the walls of this dark and drear house.
Two full years pass before he grants me permission to accompany him into cavities and crevices, the secret passages, and narrows staircase that hide between our walls. He’s come to visit me occasionally in the dead of night. We’ve played checkers and draughts by the flickering light of a tallow candle while sitting on my bed. He’s told me so many tales about the others who reside inside the walls as well that I feel as if I have known them all my life. He is sort of their Overseer, and it is highly uncommon for an Overseer to make any sort of contact whatsoever with any resident of a house like Drakes Fall Manor. But he knows my suffering and the depth of my lonesomeness so he has bent the rules for my sake. And just recently he confided that he finds me a rather headstrong and formidable young lady, opinionated and determined. I don’t quite understand what he means by that so I merely nod and say, “Yes, I am all that, and ever so much more. But I shan’t tell you anymore about myself because it’s more fun to leave some mystery to ponder in stray moments. I worry my brain about you at times, when the weather is gloomy like this. I’ll sit near my window gazing out at the lashing rain beating the poor brown leaves into submission and I’ll think, ‘Well, that Mr. Needy is certainly a remarkable fellow but I daresay, he’s quite bound and determined to keep me on this side of the walls and for what reason I cannot begin to fathom, other than he appears to have a vicious brute of a beast who gnaws on the odd limb now and again, so maybe it’s because he feels protective of me.”
Mr. Needy runs a dry hand along his brittle jaw creating a rasping sound, his protuberant eyes downcast as he studies the checkerboard. He’s said he’ll teach me to play chess but so far we haven’t met in the game room downstairs to begin my lessons. “Your father is seldom in residence,” he says. “Perhaps your need for me to assume the role of surrogate father leads you to believe I’m a fatherly sort of bein’, therefore I must be brutally truthful with you, Miss, and confess that I’m little better than my faithful ‘ell’ound. I’d ‘ave no qualms about rippin’ off your pretty little foot and gnawin’ the flesh from its bones, although I’m myself not particularly fond of feet as there are too many bones and nasty toenails. I could bite off your delicate pinky then leave the wee little bones and nail on your mummy’s bedside table beside ‘er drinkin’ glass. I should be inclined to leave your dainty ring there as well. What do you think she would say to findin’ that upon awakenin’ tomorrow mornin’?”
I shrug a thin shoulder, pull up the collar of my nightgown then turtled my head down inside, gazing up at him through my ginger lashes. “If I were a bolder, braver girl I would hold my hand out right now for you to bite off my finger just so that in the morning we will both discover how Mama responds to the mutilation of her only child. I will hazard a guess and tell you that I think she would most likely scream the house down. She can be somewhat of an hysteric these days.”
“He’s left ‘er for good this time, ‘e ‘as,” he says.
“Papa?” He nods. “How do you know such a thing?”
“I’ve the letter ‘e sent via ‘is attorney right ‘ere in me pocket. Swiped it from ‘er escritoire where she’d stuffed it into a pigeonhole to fret about later.” He pulls the crumpled envelope from his right hand pocket. “Says ‘e finds country life entirely unstimulating. ‘e wants to travel ‘round the world a dozen times or more and explore its people and places. ‘e feels stifled in Drakes Fall, as if the walls are closin’ in on ‘im.” Here he glances up from the page he is paraphrasing from to make an aside. “The walls, I assure you, are not closin’ in about ‘im. I ought to know. I’m their caretaker from within.” He folds the letter and replaces it in its envelope, then slides the whole into his pocket. “What now? What are them tears about?”
It is just that I am sitting on my bed in my home, the only home I have ever known for I was born here in a room on the other side of the nursery and shall probably one day die here, but it’s not the fear of death troubling me, it’s the mere fact that Papa will never come home any more. I shall never see him again until I am old enough to track him down like a bloodhound and demand an explanation for his abandoning us. I shall inform him that I award him very low marks as pater familia. I will recite to him a litany of the disappointments he has caused me to suffer. Then I will return every gift he’s ever given me, washing my hands of him for all eternity.
“Your well rid of ‘im, Miss Tessie,” he says, placing a finger atop a black checker and systematically jumping nearly half my red checkers in a dazzling display of pattern finding. “’e beat your mother senseless once, when she was young. This was afore you was born. ‘eed this advice, never marry a man who is ill-bred, prone to violence and actually enjoys goin’ off to sea. It will not bode well for your future.”
“I shan’t do so,” I reply. And then I raise my own eyes to meet his. “For I’m going to marry you.”
His eyes widen and one actually regurgitates from its socket, dangling by the optic nerve. He fumbles awkwardly about for his eye then replaces it tidily in its socket, blinking a few times to settle it into place. “You’re much too young to be thinkin’ of marriage, dear ‘eart, although I’m flattered by your youthful spirit and joie de vivre.”
“I hardly find much joy in life,” I sigh. “Just one bitter disappointment after another.”
“You’ve not met the right fella.”
“Oh, please! Boys are so immature!”
“One day…”
I narrow my eyes and he stops speaking at the expression on my face. “One day, I will wed you,” I say with finality, as if settling the matter once and for all.
He stares at me for the space of ten heartbeats then looks away. “I ‘ardly be the marryin’ sort.”
“Have you ever been married before?” I counter. He shakes his head. “Well, there’s always a first time. We’re not going to rush into this marriage. We’ll continue to take our time, get to know one another better, become best of friends before we become lovers.” He jumps up off the bed scattering my captured checkers over the bare wood floor. Some roll under my bed, some in the other direction toward my bedroom door as if fleeing from the rejection about to be hurled my way.
I stoically sit straight-backed on my bed, chin raised ever so slightly as I regard his continued distancing of himself from me. “You’re but a child, Miss, really!”
“I am thirteen years of age. I am no longer a child.”
“On the cusp of womanhood,” he murmurs. “I should not be spendin’ so much time with you. It’s given you peculiar notions.”
He leaves me. I sit staring at the wall into which he’s vanished yet again. I am familiar now with how to open it yet I never do. I still see his hound in my mind’s eye, my pretty pallid arm dangling from its bloody jaws. So I sit and think about my father who has walked away from Drake Falls to pursue a life free of Mother and me and all this burdensome responsibility. This is Mother’s ancestral home so I feel comforted in that he shan’t be evicting us. However, the thought runs through my head that mother, who is still a young woman at just thirty years of age, may find another man. I shudder at the thought of some strange man in the house sullying the air with his cigar smoke and the odor of bay rum. I’ve grown accustomed to an absentee father figure.
Sliding off the bed, I gather the scattered checkers, stretching a hand beneath my bed to feel for one that rolled beneath it. Instead, my fingers encounter an unfamiliar object, small and rough. I grasp it and pull it out, get up and hold it toward the candlelight, unfurling my fingers to reveal one of Lieb’s grotesque carvings. This one is a horny little black-painted demon with a malicious grin whose mouth he has painted yellow and whose bulging eyes he has painted blood red. It’s a horrid little thing and I wonder how it got there. Had Mr. Needy dropped it in the recent past? Or, perhaps three weeks ago, when Mama had taken me shopping in the town and she had directed Lieb to carry parcels up to my room when we’d returned so that Mrs. Mossman could unpack my new frocks, as I had grown two inches over the summer, he had tossed it beneath my bed then? But why?
I frown, carrying it to my dresser where I open the carved box in which I keep an assortment of treasures- a bent nail like a crooked finger, a piece of quartz that once held a rainbow in its heart four summers ago, a broken robin’s egg shell, the other little carved figure of Lieb’s, a small empty tin that had once held Father’s fragrant pipe tobacco, a broken hatpin with gilded wings raised to frame a shimmering glass peacock’s eye orb. I drop the little demon into the box then close the lid on its leering face. I do not know whether he’d dropped the carving accidentally, or if he’d deliberately tossed it beneath my bed, perhaps thinking it would bring me bad dreams and restless nights. Ignorant man, that is the norm of my nights so it’s had no ill effect on me.
Before I lie down to sleep I cut seven inches from my very long hair and carefully braid and weave it into a talisman of my own that I shall hide in the carriage house and then we’ll see whose magic is the stronger.
That morning, I use the remaining locks of hair to weave another talisman in the shape of a flower with a heart at its center. I risk unlatching the secret panel in the nursery wall and tossing it quickly inside the dark space behind. Quickly I close the door before anything can come to investigate or attempt to escape. I hope Mr. Needy finds this token. I want him to carry it in the pocket of his great frock coat. I want him to think of me whenever he slips his hand inside his pocket, whenever he rubs his fingers along the smooth bumps of flame red hair shorn from my own head and know that I am his forever more.
Mama calls in a local man because she is convinced that with all the upheaval in the home I have attracted a poltergeist. This man, Reynard Fox, is tall and fills out his suit impressively. He has slicked back pale blonde hair, a pallid complexion and gray eyes. His moustache is pencil thin and he sports a small goatee upon his chin. His coat is purple with a black velvet collar and cuffs. His trousers are black with a black satin stripe down the outside of the legs. His boots are black and polished to a high sheen. He reeks of cologne and wintergreen and is addicted to snuff. A pale lock of hair falls across his brow and he invariably gives his neck a sharp twist to move it out of his eye. He pretends to be a concerned, helpful and friendly man, but I can sense the undercurrent of deceit and distain which are the true driving engines of his personality. I do not like him. I do not like how he pets my hair then lays his large hand firmly on my small shoulder and smiles down at me.
What he is and what he can do to free me from the alleged poltergeist that in actuality does not exist because I am not plagued by any otherworldly mischief I have no idea. I am not pinched or poked. Objects from my room do not go missing but tend to appear (thanks to Mr. Needy). My dresser drawers are not opened and the contents flung about with abandon. This all actually happens to my mother, but how can I tell him how and why? She is the one plagued, but there is no poltergeist involved. But Mr. Fox has convinced her that poltergeists plague young girls on the cusp of womanhood. His gray eyes gleam when he says that word, ‘womanhood’ and I have to muster every ounce of will not to shudder from the revulsion he causes me to feel.
Mama has invited him to stay with us until he can find a way to free me from my tormentor. He suggests his sister Reyna join him in his quest, and she agrees. Reyna is a tall, slender young lady about seven years my mother’s junior, with hair as white-blonde as her brother’s and eyes a soft purple in color. She wears a purple and black striped gown, black boots. Her smile does not ever reach her eyes, but sometime I see a fire burning in their depths when she is not aware of my watching her. This happens when she looks at her brother. It leaves me feeling uneasy and troubled.
On their fifth night at Drakes Fall Manor I awaken to find a dark figure in my room. I think it is Mr. Needy and feel great relief that finally he has come and we shall be able to discuss my apprehensions. “Where have you been, Mr. Needy?” I hiss, throwing off my covers, leaning over, reaching for the matches to light my candle with. “I am half out of my mind!”
“Why do you say that, Tessie?” comes a voice that does not belong to Mr. Needy. It is the voice of Reynard Fox.
I gasp, shocked and outraged that he dares to enter my room in the night. “You do not belong here!” I say, managing to strike a match although my hands are shaking. I light the wick of my candle and shake the flame from the match before discarding it in a dish on the bedside table. “It is highly improper for a man to enter a lone female’s bed chamber, especially a young lady’s room, in the dead of night! I shall call for my mother if you do not leave this instant, sir!”
“You are an uncommonly high-spirited child. Cook, Mrs. Mossman, Jakes, Lieb…they’ve all more or less remarked upon your striking nature. ‘No shy violet, she is, Miss Tessie,’ they’ve all told me. However, you have been quite demur in your behavior since my arrival. There has been no unusual activity manifested. Are you the one responsible for the strange goings on in this house? Be truthful with me. Are these tricks your doing to torment your mother for some slight? Some offense? Do you seek to punish her for being unable to hold onto your father?”
“My father is no concern of yours!”
“Your mother is a lovely young woman. She has suitors calling upon her now, does she not? Are you afraid she will marry another man and he will not want you here, that they will send you away to a boarding school?”
“My mother would never send me away!” I shout at him vehemently.
“Shh! There is no need to shout.”
“You are infuriating me! You come into my room and wake me up in the middle of the night, questioning me and speaking absurdities! I was asleep, Mr. Fox!”
“May I inquire as to who Mr. Needy is? Why did you seem relieved when you thought I was he? Is there a man who sneaks into your room in the night? That, as you have already mentioned, is quite improper, Tessie. How does he get in?”
I leap out of bed, furious and frightened now. “There is no one! I was dreaming! You caught me in the twilight place between wakefulness and dreams! I thought you were someone else. No one sneaks into my room at night but you!” I fly to the door and wrench it open. “You frighten me!” I flee into the broad hallway, running toward the north gallery door.
I dash through the gallery connecting the main house to the north wing. Behind me I can hear the thudding boot falls of Mr. Fox as he pursues me. The ancestors scowl down disapprovingly upon me in the moonlight. I reach the door to the north wing and twist the knob. At first I think it is locked and my heart lurches with panic. Twisting it in the other direction it protests shrilly but gives and the door opens. I slip through, closing the door and leaning against it for a moment to try to gain my bearings. I have not been in the north wing in some time. A vision of lacy cobwebs drifting across the hallway, fat spiders with dancing limbs anxious for me to become ensnared in their webs runs through my mind. But behind me I hear the hollow thud of his approach through the echoing gallery. Gasping, I dash ahead, one arm rising to sweep aside anything obstructing my escape. My heart is a drumbeat within my ears and my breath is audible in the absolute darkness.
Behind me I hear the door open. “Tessie! Stop this nonsense before you hurt yourself! Come back now! I mean you no harm!”
“The ‘ell ‘e don’t,” growls a voice so close beside me I can feel the scream rising from my toes. A sere hand clasps across my mouth. “This way,” Mr. Needy breathes into my right ear. I let him guide me through a narrow open doorway. He keeps his hand across my mouth as he crowds in behind me. A moment later I hear the soft click of a latch. “’ush! Not a sound! Don’t move at all!” I nod my understanding. The air I am breathing in through my nose is musty with a hint of mold. I know where I am and am too stunned to move nor make a sound for fear his great black beast will come and make a tasty rare roast of my flank. “I don’t like this ‘un much at all,” Mr. Needy whispers in my ear. “’e’s after sumthin’.” He presses closer and his next word sends cold water through my veins. “You.” He feels me react to that and locks his other arm around me, not allowing me to move at all. I am shaking like a leaf with horror and anger, emotions suddenly roiling within me. “”Your mother wants you sent away. Not to a boardin’ school, Miss, but to an asylum. ‘e’s the ‘ead of the place and ‘is sister is in charge of the young ladies ward.” I nibble at his dry fingers, biting off flakes of papery flesh. “’old still!” he says sharply. “’e’s lookin’ for you still, ‘e is. Don’t know where you’ve gotten yourself to.”
We wait. I can hear Mr. Fox in the hallway, trying doorknobs, calling for me to come out, to return to the main house with him where he’ll rouse Cook and have her make us some nice hot tea. I hear his hand slide along the wall, catch a very faint whiff of the sulfur of his matches as he lights one after the other as he strides back and forth in the hallway, trying his damnedest to find me. I pray he does not discern the hammering beat of my heart.
It seems an eon passes before he retreats. I am now too well aware of the cold in this wing for I have nothing on my feet and did not pause to grab my dressing gown before fleeing my room. My gown is thin and provides little protection. I am shivering, my teeth chattering when Mr. Needy finally lowers his hand. I draw in a breath through my mouth and cough as flakes of his skin fly into the back of my throat from my lips. “How can she do this to me?’ I cry.
“That Carver fellow, the one she met at the church social?”
“What about him? He’s a fat old toad!”
“He’s a rich toad.”
“Mama does not need his money!”
“Aye, Miss, she does. I’ve seen her account books. Your father took ‘is share, ‘e did.”
“But she’s bought me new dresses and stockings and shoes! She’s bought herself fine new clothes as well!”
“Window dressin’. You can’t sell somethin’ that looks shabby as ‘igh priced goods, now, can you?”
“She never would!”
“She’s got no choice but to find a rich man who can support ‘er and this ‘ouse.”
“No!” I cry, but I know he would not lie to me. I am just not able to accept this terrible and terrifying news yet.
“What a man don’t want is another man’s children when he marries a pretty young wife. ‘e wants to busy ‘isself makin’ ‘is own ‘eirs with ‘er. That’s why she’s so anxious to be rid of you.”
“But I’m not insane!”
He chuckles low in his narrow throat. “No, but try to tell that Mr. Fox you aren’t. Young ladies don’t go about deliberately allowin’ their nannies to perish in the orchard. Nor do they go about their ‘ouses in the dead of night consortin’ with strange bein’s only they can see.”
“You’re not invisible! Mama would see you if you came out in broad daylight to bow over her hand!”
“’as anyone else seen me, Tessie?” he asks.
With a sudden sinking feeling I have to confess that no one I am aware of has ever seen him but me. “But I can see you plain as day. I can feel you. You can’t feel ghosts or phantoms, only the cold space their spirits occupy in this realm!”
“I not be a ghost nor a phantom,” he says. “I’m real enough, to you.” I sense movement within the walls and he tenses. “Come with me,” he says tersely. He begins guiding me through the narrow gap between the walls. Beneath my bare feel I can feel grit and dirt, the odd bit of plaster, a sharp nail. “Keep movin’.”
I don’t know where we are, where we’re going. It is black as pitch and I have lost all sense of direction. Finally we reach a place where there is an opening. It is a narrow staircase and he directs me upward. I stub my toes a dozen times before we reach the next floor and he pushes me down another passage. Finally he stops me, fumbles ahead of me in the darkness until he finds the latch and the door swings open. I pass through to find myself in one of the storage rooms in the attic of the north wing. I can see shadowy objects- trunks, packing cases, the odd piece of furniture, faintly illuminated by starlight through the tall windows.
He moves past me to rummage about, finally producing a dusty wool great coat somewhat moth-eaten and an even more moth eaten woolen blanket. I drop down into a creaky rocking chair, huddling inside the too big coat that still exudes a faint fragrance of pipe tobacco and peppermint. I drape the blanket across my knees and bury my icy toes into the folds that lie upon the floor. “What am I to do?” I inquire.
Before me I can make out his thin form pacing, hear the rasp of his fingers against his jaw as he ponders my predicament. “You’ve always been a resourceful girl,” he replies.
“I’ve had some successes, but I’ve also had myriad failures.” This is the truth.
“You’re more clever than you give yourself credit for.” He stops before me, reaches down and extracts my hand from the pocket of the coat. He presses something into my palm. I need my other hand to identify what he has given me. And when I do I am heartbroken for he has returned my hair talisman, the flower with the heart at its center.
“But I made this for you,” I say. He does not respond. “I wanted you to have it.”
“For what reason?” he asks.
“Because you are my friend,” I reply.
“Am I?”
“You are,” I insist. He has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. “We’ve played games together. We’ve spent long hours of the night talking! I can’t believe….!”
“No, Miss, your trouble is that you believe too strongly.”
“I have no other friends! My parents have kept me a virtual prisoner here! You’ve been my only friend! My truest and dearest friend and now…now….you…” Pain constricts my throat so that I cannot speak. Tears scald my eyes. I suppose my face is terrible in its contortion of betrayal and heartache. “I cannot believe you are doing this to me!” I finally manage to cry.
“You must not believe,” he says.
“No!” I cry. “No! I will always believe in you! Always and forever!”
The attic door opens and light spills in from a lamp carried by Mr. Fox. “Here she is!” he cries triumphantly.
I rise from the chair clutching the coat to me, my eyes wildly searching the large room for Mr. Needy but he is no longer there! He has vanished. I sob wrenches itself from my throat, and I fall to my knees, the very heart torn from my breast.
“There, there, love,” murmurs Miss Fox as she assists me to my feet. “That’s a good girl. Let’s get you back downstairs and tucked into your bed. In the morning we’ll go and see the doctor and he’ll fix you up right as rain, he will,” she says. And I know, I just know there will be restraints involved tonight to keep me close.
“No!” I cry. “No! You shall not tie me down nor tuck me in so tightly that I cannot move nor breathe! I will not let you!” I struggle to pull free of her grasp. Mr. Fox moves toward us, the lamp held high. She grabs the sleeves of the coat and I manage to slither out of it because it is much too big on me and she cannot get a good grasp on me through the thick woolen material.
“Reynard!” she cries, but it is too late. I hurl myself at him and he stumbles, thrown off balance. He falls backwards over a trunk, the lamp flying from his hand to crash on the wooden floor, oil spilling and the flaming wick rapidly igniting it. Still she tries to reach for me but I am running down the length of the room toward the tall window, the blank eye of glass revealing only a hint of starlight. “No!” she screams as I leap at the window, pulling my arms close, drawing my legs up.
I strike the glass, and it being so old, it shatters. I go through the window, sharp teeth of
glass tearing at me, the cold night air making me catch my breath. I am falling, my nightgown whipping against my skin like a broken useless wing. I throw my arms out, and that is how I land in the snow three stories below the broken window through which I can still hear screaming, and see the bright flare of fire.
Then darkness settles over me.
Something is tickling my face. I twitch my nose, thinking it is a fly but the tickling persists. It draws me from my chaotic dreams. I open my eyes to see a young man with coal black curls leaning over me. He is gazing at me through eyes the color of a summer sky, a sly smile playing about the corner of his mouth. “There you are,” he says, his voice familiar to my ears.
I lift my hand to grasp his wrist, to push it back so I can see what he has been tickling my nose with. It is an ornament made of hair, flame-red hair like mine. It is in the shape of a flower and has a heart at its center. I am surprised that he has it for I had thought he had returned it to me. “Where did you find it?” I ask.
“In your ‘and,” he replies. “Seems you never let it go although you tried to fly like an angel.”
“Poor landing?”
“Rather,” he says. Shaking his head, he says, “Come, no use frettin’ about that. Time to rise from your slumber. You’ve ‘ad your beauty rest.” He pockets the talisman, then grabs me by the wrists and pulls me to my feet. I am in my nightgown with the embroidered red rosebuds and the trailing green leaves on the front yoke. It has been laundered and mended but I can still discern faint bloodstains and frown at that. My feet are bare. I look down at myself and see no visible signs of trauma. My limbs are working well, not failing me in the least. “Tea?” he asks.
We pass through from the bedroom into a small kitchen where a kettle steams cheerfully on a small range. “Where are we?’ I ask.
“Where you’ve always wanted to be,” he answers. “Within the walls of Drakes Fall Manor.”
“But there are just narrow passages and steep little staircases within the walls!”
“That’s all you ever saw with your livin’ eyes. This is my ‘ome and always ‘as been.” As he says this a great black beast of a hound lifts its massive head to stare at me through yellow eyes. “Rex,” he tells me. “My dog. You’ve met.”
“Mr. Needy…”
He shakes his head. “Jinks,” he says. “Me name be Jinks.”
“Mr. Jinks…” Again he shakes his head. “All right then, Jinks,” I say.
“Although I’ve kind of grown fond of Mr. Needy. Jinks Needy,” he muses. Then he makes me an exaggerated bow. As he stands upright again he gives me that wry smile.
“You certainly look different.” He is, in fact, quite dashing.
“Perceptions are altered here. I look how you want me to look, like you look how I want you to look.”
“I certainly don’t want your dog looking like that!”
He laughs. “Then perceive him as a cuddly puppy with soulful eyes, Mrs. Needy.”
“He must have been a huge pup…, excuse me! What did you just call me?”
He nods toward my left hand. I frown, lifting my hand and am stunned to discover a gold band encircling my ring finger. I recognize it as my Grandmother Talbot’s ring. “It’s what you wanted, to be my wife forever and ever. The walls heard you say it. There’s no takin’ it back.”
I cannot deny that I said that. I remember quite clearly. “You are real then? You aren’t someone I made up! I wasn’t out of my mind, was I? You are real?”
“I am real, to you. Isn’t that what matters most?”
Is it? I do some quick thinking and decide that I have exactly what I wanted. Mama cannot have me committed. I am away from that wretched Lieb and his strange carvings, and the oogling eyes of the new houseman, Jakes. I will not suffer being locked away at the Foxes’ asylum like a sad bird in a barred and locked cage. “Yes, that is what matters most,” I reply.
He winks. “Then you and I, we’re goin’ to ‘ave a long and ‘appy life together, we are.”
Drakes Fall Manor is copyrighted 2015, and is included in Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, Volume 1, all rights reserved. Drakes Fall Manor, nor any parts thereof, cannot be used unless permission is obtained from the author.
