“Oh, you know, Mr. Roberts’s cousin. He knows all about you. He said you were a pretty young thing, Aunt Celia, when you first came here.”
“How nice of him to say that, dear,” she answered, “but I can’t place who he would be.”
Just as Emily opened her mouth to explain, the door slammed loudly. They looked up, startled, to see Kate standing against it, a Kate they had never seen before. It wasn’t just that her clothes were damp, filthy, and torn. It wasn’t even that her hair straggled wildly about her dirt-smudged face. It was the ghastly color of that face and the glittering eyes full of unshed tears. She stared back at them for a few seconds, her chest heaving as she struggled for breath. Then she burst into loud sobs and collapsed onto the floor.
“Draw the curtains! Draw the curtains!” was the first thing she managed to say. Emily ran to comply. They hustled her to the couch, pulled off her shoes and stockings, and piled blankets on her, but when Aunt Prim brought her a cup of tea, she could barely hold it, her hands shook so much. She gasped and shivered and alarmed her aunts extremely.
The worried Prim wrapped Emily in a blanket and made her drink a cup of tea, too. “But, Aunt Prim, there’s nothing wrong with me,” protested Emily. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Kate, I really don’t. She and Mr. Marak were quarreling a little, but I think that’s really her fault because she was rude to him. What happened to you, Kate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Kate let out a quavering little laugh. I suppose I do, she thought. The memories of the bonfire and the journey whirled around in her head like fragments of a dream. She gulped the hot drink, feeling its warmth spread through her, and looked at the cozy room. Everything here was so real, so solid. Outside she could hear rain lashing the windows, thunder rolling and advancing, the wind howling in the trees. The storm had finally struck.
“Emily,” said Aunt Prim. “I want you to tell Celia and me everything that happened tonight. And, Kate, I want you just to listen. Start right at the beginning and go on till the end, and don’t leave anything out.”
Emily had been waiting practically her whole life for such an invitation. She had a world-class story and a perfect audience, and her sister was not to say a word. Emily started at the beginning and went on till the end. She didn’t omit a thing. She didn’t even forget to tell them that their nephew was a pigheaded fool.
“Well, Kate, I can certainly understand your being tired and upset,” Celia said cautiously. “But—did anything else happen, dear? That Emily’s left out?”
“Yes,” Kate said, taking a breath. “After Em left, Mr. Marak said good-bye to me. No—he said—he said until next time.” She thought about that for a second, and her eyes grew large. “And then I wouldn’t shake hands with him because he’d been so rude. So he laughed and said I was just upset because of his hood, that I’d been imagining all these horrors. And then”—she raised her frightened eyes to theirs—“then he pulled back his hood. And he said I might have imagined other horrors, but not this one. Because—because—he wasn’t human. He just wasn’t human! Oh, Em, you were on that horse with him! I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
The three listeners exchanged amazed glances. Emily was the most startled of all. She stared blankly at her sister.
“I thought he was nice,” she said.
“Now, Kate,” asked Prim, “when you say this Mr. Marak wasn’t—human—what exactly do you mean? Do you mean he didn’t look human?”
“He, well…” Kate trailed off, looking around at their expectant faces.
“Well, what?” prompted Emily. “Did he have three eyes?”
“No, just two, but they were so strange,” she answered. “Different colors. Light and dark.”
“Kate,” said Aunt Celia kindly, “that is quite rare, but it’s not unheard of.”
“I know,” Kate replied, “but that wasn’t all. His hair was all wrong, too. It was part white and part black, like a horse’s mane, and it was long, and loose, and it wasn’t like hair somehow.” She looked helplessly at their puzzled faces.
“For heaven’s sake, Kate, he was an old man,” snorted Emily. She had secretly been hoping for empty eye sockets or no head.
“No, you’re wrong, Em, he wasn’t old. Oh, he must be old, but he looked, well, not young, but … not old. But so ugly and bony, and his skin was so pale! And his eyebrows were all thick and bushy, and his teeth—there was something awful about his teeth.” Emily started to giggle. “Stop it, Em! I just can’t explain it.” She glared at her sister. “You wouldn’t be laughing if you saw him, too. He was just—all wrong somehow.”
“Well, Kate,” said Aunt Prim sympathetically, “he doesn’t sound like a nice old man at all. He sounds like quite an eccentric all the way around. He certainly set you up for a shock, wearing a hood and talking about horrors and ghostly rides. I suppose if you saw him neatly trimmed and brushed by daylight, you would have thought he looked odd, but you were tired and unstrung, and he wanted to give you a scare. Your nerves weren’t ready for it, that’s all. You haven’t been yourself these last several weeks.”
A short time later, Kate lay in bed listening to the rain against the windows and the ominous rumble of the thunder. Flashes of lightning lit the sky. She stared up into the darkness overhead, dreadfully tired but too upset to sleep. She was contrasting the terrifying memory with the humiliation of trying to describe it. She wasn’t sure which one was worse.
Her door creaked open in the darkness. A small figure padded in and snuggled down next to her.
“Kate, are you awake?” came a whisper. “I’m sorry I made you mad. If you don’t like that man, I don’t like him either, but it was splendid to hear him call Mr. Roberts a pigheaded fool.”
“Yes, I suppose it was,” Kate whispered back. She hugged her sister and smiled a little at the memory.
“I’ve thought of something,” Emily whispered. “I’ll bet he was a ghost. Did he shimmer a little? Do you think he was a ghost?”
“I don’t know,” Kate murmured sleepily. “Maybe he was. Maybe his skin shimmered. It certainly looked odd.”
“Did he look as if he’d been dead a long time?” Emily asked.
“No,” came the drowsy reply.
“Well—how about a little while?” Emily prompted hopefully. She waited. “Kate? Had he been dead a little while?” But no answer came. Her sister was asleep.
Kate’s nightmares left her no peace. A man in a black hood kept dragging her from the house. She caught onto chairs, banisters, door frames, anything within reach, but he was stronger than she was and just laughed at her. She couldn’t see his face, but his eyes gleamed brightly from beneath the hood. When dawn came, she was glad to get up.
The house seemed very quiet with all the windows closed against the rain. Kate stood at the parlor window and watched the wind tossing the tree branches. Thick, dark clouds hung low in the sky. Aunt Prim came back from the Hall after lunch, bringing Hugh Roberts with her. They hurried up the steps together as large drops began to fall, and in another moment the rain cascaded down in silvery sheets.
Hugh Roberts came into the parlor and warmed up at the fire. He hadn’t seen much of his charges in the last couple of weeks, and he was surprised at the change he found in Kate. Prim was right. The girl looked really ill. The big man rubbed his plump hands together as he toasted them in the heat.
“Your aunt has told me quite a tale of adventure,” he announced to them. “Do you have any idea how far you were from here? What land you crossed last night?”
“Em, you were on the horse,” Kate said. “Did you see any lights or landmarks? I was too busy trying to keep my footing,” she added resentfully.
“I couldn’t see anything at all,” Emily said. “It was as black as a pot out there. I don’t know how the horse kept from tripping over his own feet.”