A Great and Terrible Beauty

"What's the matter now?" Tom raps against the hood of the carriage to spur the driver on. But the lady is really giving the driver what for. We might be here all night. The drunken man leers at me, winks, makes an extremely rude gesture involving his index fingers.

Disgusted, I turn away and look down an empty alley. Tom's leaning out his window. I hear him, condescending and impatient, trying to reason with the couple in the street.

But something's gone wrong. His voice grows muffled, like sounds heard through a shell held to the ear. And then all I can hear is my blood quickening, thumping hard against my veins. A tremendous pressure seizes me, knocking the air from my lungs.

It's happening again.

I want to cry out to Tom, but I can't, and then I'm under, falling through that tunnel of color and light again as the alley bends and flickers. And just as quickly, I'm floating out of the carriage, stepping lightly into the darkened alley with its shimmering edges. There's a small girl of eight or so sitting in the straw-covered dirt, playing with a rag of a doll. Her face is dirty, but otherwise, she seems out of place here, in her pink hair ribbon and starched white pinafore that's a size too big for her. She sings a snippet of song, something I recognize faintly as being an old English folk tune. When I approach she looks up.

"Isn't my dolly lovely?"

"You can see me?" I ask.

She nods and goes back to combing her filthy fingers through the doll's hair. "She's looking for you."

"Who?"

"Mary."

"Mary? Mary who?"

"She sent me to find you. But we have to be careful. It's looking for you, too."

The air shifts, bringing a damp chill with it. I'm shaking uncontrollably. "Who are you?"

Behind the little girl, I sense movement in the murky dark. I blink to clear my eyes but it's no trick the shadows are moving . Quick as liquid silver the dark rises and takes its hideous shape, the gleaming bone of its skeletal face, the hollow, black holes where eyes should be. The hair a tangle of snakes. The mouth opens and the rasping moan escapes. " Come to us, my pretty, pretty "

"Run." The word is a choked whisper on my tongue. The thing is growing, slithering ever closer. The howls and moans inside it making every cell in my body go ice-cold. A scream inches its way up my throat. If I let it out, I'll never stop.

Heart pounding hard against my ribs, I say again, stronger, "Run!"

The thing hesitates, pulls back. It sniffs at the air, as if tracking a scent. The little girl turns her flat brown eyes to me. "Too late," she says, just as the creature turns its unseeing eyes toward me. The decaying lips spread apart, revealing teeth like spikes. Dear God, the thing is grinning at me. It opens wide that horrible mouth and screechesa sound that loosens my tongue at last.

"No!" In an instant I'm back inside the carriage and leaning out the window, yelling at the couple. "Get out of the bloody waynow!" I shout, snapping at the horse's rump with my shawl. The mare whinnies and lurches, sending the couple rushing for the safety of the tavern.

The driver steadies the horse as Tom pulls me down into my seat. "Gemma! Whatever has possessed you?"

"I" In the alley, I look for the thing and don't find it. It's just an alley, with dull light and several dirty children trying to steal a hat from a smaller boy, their laughter bouncing off stables and crumbling hovels. The scene passes behind us into the night.

"I say, Gemma, are you all right?" Tom is truly concerned.

I'm going mad, Tom. Help me.

"I was simply in a hurry." The sound coming out of my mouth is a cross between a laugh and a howl, like the sound a madwoman would make.

Tom eyes me as if I'm some rare disease he's helpless to treat. "For pity's sake! Get hold of yourself. And please try to watch your language at Spence. I don't want to have to collect you only hours after I've deposited you there."

"Yes, Tom," I say as the carriage jostles back to life on the cobblestones, leading us away from London and shadows.

CHAPTER FOUR

"There's the school now, sir," the driver shouts.

We've been riding for an hour across rolling hills dotted with trees. The sun has set, the sky settling into that hazy blue of twilight. When I look out my window, I can't see anything but a canopy of branches overhead, and through the lacework of leaves, there's the moon, ripe as a melon. I'm starting to think that our driver must be imagining things, too, but we crest a hill and Spence comes into glorious view.