The Splendour Falls (50 page)

It was clear that the reverend liked the guy, even though everyone else was pushing Hannah towards Ethan. I didn't want Jacob to be the one who left her in the lurch, but having read Hannah's journal, that seemed more than likely.

I remembered the blistering animosity radiating from the window last night, aimed at the spot where Rhys and I came out of the woods. Was
I
some kind of trigger for the Colonel? I certainly identified with Hannah. If she had been meeting Jacob on the sly, her father would certainly have been seething as he watched from the window.

I filed those questions away and kept reading. The story, even without my personal connection to it, engrossed me. I lost track of time, squinting until my eyes ached. Gigi shifted positions twice, getting up, stretching, sinking back into my lap with a sigh.

Then the bottom of one page ended in the middle of a sentence about Easter services, and the top of the next one talked about the fall harvest. Confused, I flipped back and forth, and found that the entries skipped from March to September 1870.

I carried the book to the window and angled it to catch what light the clouds hadn't cut off. Inside, near the binding, was a shadow of the tattered edges of the missing pages. But it was flat, just a copied image. The pages had been torn out before the journal had been reproduced.

Lowering the book, I looked out the window, surprised at how dark it had gotten. Even with the distraction of Hannah's story, and the missing months, my disquiet came back in a rush. Shouldn't one or both of the Griffiths be back?

The phone rang from the kitchen, the only one that wasn't cordless and worthless with the power out. I was stiff after sitting curled on the couch for hours, and by the time I reached the phone, I'd lost count of the rings. When I finally picked up, Professor Griffith sounded relieved.

‘Sylvie! Are you watching the news?'

‘The power went out a little while ago.' I had tried to stay calm about it, since I'd lived through a power outage before, and it was a lot scarier in the city, where the whole world stopped. But the worry in his voice turned up the volume on my nerves.

‘Call Rhys,' the professor instructed me, in a noarguments tone. ‘The water is headed downriver much faster than anyone thought. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get back to you two. The state police are already putting up road barricades.'

Maybe some part of me had anticipated this, but it was much smaller than the part that wondered what I'd been thinking, staying by myself.

Deep breaths, Sylvie. Don't panic.
I felt safe in the house. I just had to trust my instincts. Bluestone Hill had stood through floods before. Gigi and I would be all right.

‘OK,' I said, surprising myself with my calm. ‘Don't risk coming back here if it looks dicey.'

‘There's a torch in my room, and Rhys should have one, too. You've still got a good bit of daylight left, but it won't hurt to be prepared.'

‘Yes, sir.' I looked at the clock on the wall. How had it gotten so late? Had I lost that much time in the past?

‘You have Rhys's mobile number? It's on the tablet by the phone in the foyer.'

‘OK.'

It was starting to be my mantra. Everything was going to be all right. Storms had come before, and they would come again. That was nature.

But so was the destruction they left in their wake.

The professor rang off, and I went to find my cell phone. I'd plugged it in after I talked to John that morning, so it should have charged before the power went out. At least
something
had worked out.

At the bottom of the steps I paused, one hand on the banister. The stairwell was cool, in a way that had nothing to do with the overcast skies and the distant storms. Defiantly, I put a foot on a stair, gripping the railing tightly, telling myself the ghost couldn't startle me like it had Clara. It couldn't hurt me unless I let it.

I braved it out, but my heart was pounding when I reached the top landing and saw the sheer curtains of the French doors shifting in an unearthly breeze. My
knuckles went white on the banister and I held my breath in dread, but there was no shape or form.

I'd never seen the Colonel during the day, so maybe he had limits. But what had stirred him up?

Think, Sylvie.
I'd first glimpsed him when I'd been out on the lawn. Then again from the same place. Then I'd sensed him from inside after I'd seen Addie going to meet the TTC – out on the grounds.

So someone must be out on the grounds.

I forced myself forward, ignoring the prickle of fear on my neck. When the cold didn't get worse, I held my breath and pushed through the spot that nothing occupied. I threw the latch and flung open the windows, stepping onto the balcony to scan the storm-coloured twilight.

The wind was cool and damp, tangling my hair around my face. It smelled of distant rain but also of the river, of everything that was washing down with it. Of fish and industry. Of decaying vegetation and urban storm drains. What was coming was the flip side of the coin of progress.

The wind carried a noise as well – the first ghost I'd sensed, and the last I'd identified. I knew the highpitched cry now, and I could hear the hunger and fear and loneliness in it. It was far off, and so was the sound that came with it: the faint, brave bark of a tiny dog.

My stomach knotted with a painful yank. I'd left Gigi on the couch with her chew when I'd gone to answer the phone. I hadn't heard her growl at the cold on the stairs.

Rushing back inside, I was so chilled with panic, I
could have walked right through the Colonel fully manifest and I wouldn't have known it. In my room, I grabbed Gigi's favourite toy and squeaked it as I ran through the upstairs hall, calling her name, listening for the jingle of her tags.

I dashed down the stairs, for once without a single thought of falling. In the den, I squeaked the toy and called her again. The parlour was empty, and so was the dining room. I got to the kitchen and found the back door standing open, sick dread halting me at the sight.

It hadn't been like that when I was on the phone. All the doors were closed tight. Rhys and Professor Griffith had checked before they left.

I ran out into the yard, without a jacket, without a flashlight, and sprinted to the edge of the terrace, looking out on the rolling drop of terrain to the woods, and beyond that, the river.

‘Gigi!' I yelled her name into the wind. The faint wisp of a baby's cry came back to me and, with nothing to guide me but a hunch, I desperately followed it. Since that first night, my dog had been determined to track down that sound.

I didn't go into Hannah's woods. I kept heading north, parallel to the river, weaving in and out through the trees until I stumbled onto a trail, and realized I was on the path to the ruins of Old Cahawba. Maybe Gigi remembered the way, and it had made her bold in her pursuit.

Seizing that hope, I ran along the path, stopping every hundred feet or so to rest my leg and call into the trees for my dog. I'd given up trying to use an alpha
dog voice. My yells were frantic, and hoarse with my terror for her.

When I reached the Cahawba graveyard, it was almost dusk. The thin cover of clouds diffused the light to a uniform glow, turning the trees into towering monsters and the moss dripping from their branches into vampire cloaks.

Suddenly one seemed to come alive in front of me. I screamed, my nerves stretched to their limit. The figure raised its arms, like flapping wings, and spoke.

‘Sylvie! What are you doing here?'

I recognized his voice and would have felt foolish if I hadn't been so upset. You would think I would've known by now that if someone was going to grab me or loom out of the dark, it was going to be Rhys.

‘Gigi's gone,' I said, wheezing with fear and exhaustion. ‘I followed a noise this way. I have this horrible feeling—'

He took my shoulders in a steadying grip. ‘We'll find her. You said you followed a sound?'

I nodded, then shook my head. I'd trailed the faint cry at first, but hadn't heard it in a while. Yet my instincts had carried me this way, and they kept proving smarter than I was.

‘Shawn came to the house earlier,' I said. My teeth had started to chatter once I'd stopped moving. It hadn't been this cold up on the Hill. Rhys rubbed my arms, warming me outside with friction, and inside with his careful attention. ‘He wanted me to work with him. Make this crazy magic dynasty. And when I told him to leave …' I shivered too hard to talk.

His fingers tightened in anger, but not at me. ‘Did he hurt you?'

I shook my head. ‘No. He didn't even get mad, which was worse. Maybe he took Gigi or lured her away.'

‘Sylvie, this is where the two rivers converge, and there's a flood coming down both of them. We need to get out of here.'

Determination burned off fear, and maybe good sense, too. ‘I can't leave without Gigi!'

We were yelling over the wind now, which moaned and growled like a living thing. But it carried something else with it, a real growl, from a real animal.

I shook off Rhys's hold and ran towards the sound. It led me towards the bluff where the joined rivers curved around, and the chimney marking the space that had once housed the prison.

Shock made me stumble. I could
see
the ghosts now. In the dusk was a cloud of suggestion, formless hints in pillars of sickly grey light. Even more appalling were the sounds, wretched moans that pulled at every dark, miserable part my soul.

Rhys came up beside me as I stared into the cold mist of suffering. ‘Can you see her?'

‘No.' Only masks of horror floating in and out of the cloud, faces with hopeless eyes, hungry to drag me down with them. Terror stole away my breath, and my chest burned, as if I were drowning, too.

Then, from the midst of them, I caught a small dog's ferocious barks, and desperation buoyed me back up. I grabbed Rhys's arm, afraid even to hope, and
somehow dug below the horror for my voice. ‘Gigi, come here.'

Her next bark was sharp, distinct. Obedient. Standing at the very edge of the invisible wall that imprisoned the ghosts, so close that the frigid mist dampened my skin and my hair, I called her again.

Her excited panting reached out from the fog, as if she was running to me. But then I heard a horrible snap, and a yelp, and a heartrending cry of pain.

Without thinking, I plunged into the icy haze, feeling Rhys's grasp just miss me. He called my name, and I knew why Gigi hadn't come to me sooner. Once inside the cloud of ghosts, I could barely hear anything but their misery. My heart beat against my ribs and an overwhelming despair clawed through my insides.

The fog was resilient. It had weight and substance, like flabby flesh. I heard Gigi's frantic cries, and I pushed forward with renewed resolve.

They are only ghosts. They can't hurt you.
I didn't even know if this was true – it didn't
feel
true – but I clung to the thought single-mindedly, or I wouldn't have been able to make myself move.

Reaching, stretching, I grasped something solid and warm. A hand. A real hand, pulling me out of the fog. Rhys, of course. It always was.

We stood in perfectly normal darkness. I was freezing and soaked to the bone, and there was ice on my hair. Steam rose from my skin. I'd come all the way through the prison and out the other side, leaving the ghosts behind their invisible wall.

But I hadn't found my dog. Rhys wrapped me up in
his rain jacket, a cocoon of warmth which crinkled noisily in my ears as I pushed loose from him. ‘Where's Gigi? I was following her barks.'

He held onto my arms, and I realized with a jolt how close I'd come the edge of the bluff. A few steps more, and I would have tumbled into the river. ‘Look down,' he said, and dread curdled in my gut.

I peered over the side and saw Gigi lying about four feet down a sheer drop. Her tongue hung out, and she panted heavily. Something inside me twisted and came undone – the parts the stubborn dog had held together all these months.

She saw me and tried to get up, but she couldn't. Her whines were so soft, I could hardly hear them over the rush of the river. ‘Stay,' I told her, my voice breaking along with my heart. I tried to make it more emphatic so she would obey, but could only manage a sob. ‘Stay, Gigi.'

Rhys's arm was around my waist, keeping me steady as the edge threatened to crumble under my feet. ‘Sylvie,' he said with gentle force, getting my attention. There was an anxious warning in his voice. ‘Look at the water.'

It was rising as we stood there. In maybe five minutes, Gigi would be carried away in the flood.

‘I have to get her.' Pushing away my anguish, my fear for her, I readied myself for an argument, but Rhys didn't protest.

All business, he stripped off his top layer – a longsleeved shirt – and handed it to me. ‘Use this to make a sling for her. I'll lower you down.'

‘Anchor me above the knee,' I told him, to save my tibia the stress. I crouched in position at the drop-off with a dizzying sense of déjà vu and a rush of familiar phobia. I tamped it down and kept my eyes on Gigi.

‘Careful,' Rhys said as I walked my hands down the embankment. Whining piteously, Gigi tried to wag her tail as I got nearer. I hadn't thought I had any heart left to ache, but I was wrong. Slithering down, I pushed my belly over the edge, then my hips. Rhys's hands tightened on my knees, holding them securely as he lay on the ground above, counterbalancing my dangling weight.

By stretching my arms, I was just able to reach Gigi. She cried as I slipped her into the sling I'd made of Rhys's shirt, and I crooned soothing nonsense to her. I could barely hear myself above the river. The water had reached the bottom of the rock that had broken her fall. It splashed us both as I looped the tied sleeves of the shirt around my neck, cradling Gigi with one hand, holding myself away from the cliff with the other.