“One always hears of ghosts at this time of the year,” she said, and shrugged. “The season is turning dark and the storms are upon us. The living walk beside things that would be stricken by sunlight. Now it is time for your tale, Mrs. MacFarlane, for it is clear you have one.”
I flinched, my sherry sloshing in my glass. The bones of my corset oppressed me and I felt as though I’d been caged inside a skeleton not mine own. Perhaps it was that of a whale, and I was a Jonah, adrift and punished by God. I put the glass to my lips and drank the balance.
“Tell me why you’ve come here, to this town on the water. The wind is cold, and the streets full of trouble, and no one comes without a reason. Will you sell your soul as a stowaway? Will you go to Thule?”
“Thule?” I asked, my heart racing with that word. “What do you know of Thule?”
She tilted her head, appraising me with the attention of a jeweler looking through a loupe.
“Tell me your tale, and I shall tell you.”
I had never spoken of Thule, nor had I heard tell of it from anyone but the notorious one who haunted me, the minder of my misery.
The innkeeper tilted the decanter, and sherry filled my glass again. I looked at her slender figure, her strangely ageless countenance, and though I had kept mine own counsel for twenty years, her mention of Thule persuaded me. I found myself confessing my sorrow to her.
“I will not sell my soul, no, for it is not mine to sell at present. To Thule, though, I may be bound.”
I had never told this tale to anyone, or no one beside the medium, and she only in the utmost desperation, my skin heaving and quivering, my burden boiling my blood. I would begin.
“This is my soul, then, and this the history of my trouble, the history of the Thule I know too well. My second cousin was twenty-five years my senior, and his announcement at my birth that I was to be his wife, and that he would devote himself to the welfare of the family, stirred my parents. On my fourteenth birthday, a carriage arrived at our house, and my mother stood on the roof of our building looking down as my cousin’s manservant settled me into the cushions, my small trousseau, my books and belongings.
I went to my bedchamber in his house uptown, dined with him twice, and then he was gone to his business, traveling by ship to the far North for the next year.”
Thus far, my story was nothing strange to the innkeeper, a trouble known to women, perhaps not terribly different from her own.
“He was lost at sea?” she prompted.
“Not in the usual fashion. My husband returned to me a hard shadow of his former self, mustache white, though it had been black when he left New York. He came into the house, and I came down the front stairs to meet him. I was there when he opened his trunk. Something unfolded out of it, stood in the center of our foyer, and looked at me with burning eyes.
“I am dreadfully sorry, dear Cousin Annabel,” said my husband to me, and there was no emotion in his voice. “But on my voyage, I have made the acquaintance of a new master.”
I looked at my husband, and at the thing standing beside him. It was tall and slender, with an excess of fingers, dressed in a long black coat, which I remembered as having belonged to my husband. There was the pale blue monogram I had embroidered, on the collar. Beneath the hem of the coat I could see hooves, and a lashing tail, somewhat feline, somewhat… else.
Had my husband met the devil at sea? I did not love my husband. I scarcely knew him. He was an old man and I was only a girl. This, though, was nothing I desired for him, nor for myself.
“What, praytell, is the name of your companion?” I managed to ask. “Will your friend be staying here long? Shall I tell the servants to prepare a room?”
“My companion’s name is Night,” my husband said, as though I ought to know already.
The thing looked at me, and it glittered like a sky full of stars, but it was a lacunae in the center of the darkness, a place where a star had died, and beyond the edge of the dark there was something much worse, a roiling red planet, hidden behind a thin black veil.
“And where did you meet?” I asked, my voice that of a polite hostess. I had in my hands a tray of cordial, and I could hear the glasses rattling, but I held myself as steady as I could.
“Thule,” said the thing, its voice a hiss containing an unlikely mellifluence. I felt myself sway at its sweetness. “Thule was my kingdom, but I am banished by a mortal dreamer. I was the ruler of Thule, and now I shall bide a time with you while I seek for the dreamer who dares injure me.”
“I found my friend on the ship,” said my husband seemingly oblivious to the creature’s foulness. “A stowaway, fled from the land of dreams. And oh, that such a one could be hidden amongst coiled ropes.” He turned to look at the creature, and on his face there was nothing but worship.
I turned and walked back up the stair, feeling eyes on my spine. I went directly to my own chamber, and locked the door behind me, pressing my back to the wood, gasping.
I was the ruler of Thule. The creature said again in my mind, and the words resonated terribly inside me, over and over.”
I looked at the innkeeper, and her eyes were on mine, steady. She nodded.
“Thule,” she repeated. “I thought as much.”
I continued.
“From that night forward, I listened to the sound of whispers, but I never knew what they discussed. My husband took to drink, and the stowaway took to meat. The butcher brought us wrapped packets, tied tightly with red string, and in these late days, whenever I saw any red fabric, I thought of this, the way that string had unspooled down our front staircase, twisting like intestines on the white marble of the floor.
It was not long before my husband was dead. I looked into his open grave on a snowy day in February and saw something at the bottom of it, dozens of long and tangled arms embracing the coffin. Inside it, his frozen body bore the marks of hooves. In the official version, he died of drink.
My woe continued with my husband’s death, for though he left me his fortune, he also left me the stowaway. I spent my evenings sitting in the dark, opposite a pair of glowing eyes. And so went my misery, nearly twenty years of it.
The creature was neither husband nor companion. We shared the house, but that was all. The stowaway did not visit my bed, nor did it seem eager to woo me to any unsavory realm. It went about its own business, sometimes leaving a trail of blood or of thick, black fluid. In the night, I’d wake to sounds I couldn’t parse, shrills and moans, a music like a piano being dragged down a flight of metal stairs, the scuttlings of animals both small and large, but the stowaway did not speak to me with its honeyed voice, nor did it touch me with its burning fingertips.
It did not, that is, until one fateful night six months prior to this evening. That night is the reason I am here now.”
I looked to my audience. She had leaned forward in her chair, drawing her shawl more tightly about her shoulders.
“Go on,” she said eagerly, but I could not. The knowledge of the thing I carried had overwhelmed me, and it was necessary I retreat to my chamber. It was too dark. Night had fallen, and I no longer trusted myself to remain among humans.
“I have heard many tales,” the innkeeper said. “It may be that I can assist you, whatever it is.”
“Tomorrow,” I told her. “I will tell you the rest of my woe, and you will counsel me, if indeed you can. For tomorrow, I may be liberated from the misery that has haunted me.”
“A sleeping draught,” she said, offering me a hot cup, though sleep was beyond me. I could not allow myself true unconsciousness, not with my burden.