I got up and went to the door, listening a moment before I opened it. As I suspected, Noah was gone. I looked down, and there were two fresh towels on the floor. I picked them up, catching a faint waft of his scent. He’d brought me towels? My heart skipped a beat, but I told it to calm down. His kindnesses weren’t pure. They were laden with mystery and half-truths.
The trouble was, judging by how intensely I’d reacted when his lips brushed my ear, I had a funny feeling I was already in too deep.
10.
Despite my misgivings, I wrapped myself in the clean, dry towels and climbed into bed, savouring the warmth they brought, and I tried not to fixate on how much I enjoyed Noah’s scent on them. They said the devil didn’t appear with hoofs and pointy horns, but rather took on a more seductive form. Like Joseph Geefs’ Lucifer statue, Le génie du mal. The original one was considered too beautiful, so they made his brother, Guillaume, sculpt another, less alluring version.
Was that what Noah was? Some kind of alluring temptation I needed to resist? I pulled the duvet over me and slowly, I drifted to sleep, overcome with exhaustion.
My nightmare was vivid.
I stood in the attic bedroom, wearing nothing but a thin white nightgown. A baby’s cry came from the cot, but when I tried to peer inside there was no infant, just an empty, dark, swirling shadow. The cries continued, dread and fear making my stomach twist.
Suddenly, the room started to fill with water. It seeped up from beneath the floorboards. First a slow trickle, but as it continued to flood, that awful musty smell went away, replaced with the salty, briny scent of the ocean. Fish and crabs and seaweed floated in the water as it rose higher and higher, my body floating up with it until there were barely a few inches left between my head and the ceiling. I struggled to breathe, gasping for air as I tried to keep my nose and mouth above water.
Then something hooked around my foot. I looked down and saw a rope tied around my ankle. On the other end of it was an anchor dragging me down. I struggled against the pull, but it was no use. My head went under the water, and my lungs begged for oxygen.
I came awake with a silent scream. Just like last time, no sound came out, and I couldn’t move a single muscle. All I could do was lay there, paralysed and terrified that some dark force was trapping me inside my body. Was it the same dark force that lingered in the attic? Were the spirits of those babies Noah and Vee’s great-grandmother had lost somehow haunting me?
The paralysation lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity.
I shot up in bed and ripped open my curtains. It was still raining out, not quite morning yet. I hated these in-between hours where it could feel so incredibly lonely to be awake. I’d become well-acquainted with them after Dad died, spending months unable to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time.
I flopped back into bed. The towels I’d fallen asleep in were bunched up into balls under the duvet. I must’ve been tossing and turning during my nightmare.
I lay in bed, reliving the terrifying sense of drowning. I felt rundown, like I was getting a cold. It was all the stress. When I finally crawled out of bed, I went upstairs and ran myself a hot bath while the house was still blessedly quiet. I didn’t want to see Noah today. I was still confused after last night, unsure if he was a friend or a foe.
Right now, I was leaning toward foe, despite the money he’d given me.
I climbed into the bath and ran a washcloth over my body as I remembered the faint, barely-there touch of his mouth brushing my ear. Had he really done that, or had I imagined it? I found myself obsessing as I dazedly ran the washcloth back and forth over my stomach.
Snap out of it, Estella!
Somehow, I suspected Noah was having a little too much fun toying with me. Well, no more. I’d no longer be a piece of entertainment on the side of his mysterious grand plans.
Done washing, I dried myself off, got dressed and went into the kitchen in search of breakfast. I startled momentarily because Vee sat at the table, a steaming mug of tea in front of her.
“Good morning,” I said, moving by the table and going to open the cupboard.
“A lot of commotion in this house last night,” she commented. I felt her eyes on the back of my head.
I pulled out my jar of peanut butter, closing the cupboard. “I thought you were asleep. I knocked on your bedroom door several times.”