“I’ve just got a little bit of a headache. But I … I think I hallucinated seeing your dad. It was really weird.”
Noah frowned in consternation. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell I’d rattled him.
“It was probably just a dream,” I said, waving him off.
“No,” he breathed. “Tell me what you saw.”
I coughed, my throat dry. Noah poured me a glass of water, and I took a long gulp, aware of Sylvia in the corner watching our interaction. Would she see we were closer than we should be?
“You were a baby, and you were crying. Sylvia was trying to soothe you,” I told him in a shaky voice. “Your dad took you, and you stopped crying. Then he carried you up to the attic.”
Noah’s frown didn’t abate as he listened to me. Sylvia’s eyes were wide, and it made me nervous. Feeling the need to brush off the weirdness, I sat up and stood from the couch. “Anyway, I think the séance just scared me. That’s why I fainted. And whatever I saw was only a dream. Or a hallucination.” He didn’t seem convinced, but he let me stand anyway. I approached Sylvia, grabbing hold of the handles on her wheelchair. “I’ll put Sylvia to bed.”
Noah didn’t protest as I wheeled her from the living room and to her bedroom, all the while my heart wouldn’t quit racing. Whatever I saw, it seemed important. I helped Sylvia into her pyjamas and was lifting her into bed when her small, gentle hand landed on my wrist.
“You should be wary of Noah,” she said, her eyes concerned.
I blinked, taken off guard by her statement. “Why is that?”
“He’s dangerous. I can see he’s gained your trust, and that you two have formed a bond but … he’s not a good person, Estella.”
I studied her, anxiety gripping my heart. I didn’t want to distrust Noah, but why would Sylvia call him dangerous? “How is he dangerous?” I asked.
“He’s done bad things,” she replied.
“What sort of—"
“Your father once told me you were born with a caul,” she said then, cutting me off.
I stared at her, not understanding. “A caul?”
She slumped back, looking overcome with exhaustion, which made sense since it had been a long night, and this was the most she’d spoken to me in a while. I lowered her into bed and pulled the covers over. “What you saw was a real glimpse into the past,” she whispered then, her voice very weak. “When Noah was a baby, I could never get him to stop crying.”
Her words stole my breath. My dream or vision or whatever it was had actually happened? I wanted to ask more questions, but I could see by how her head flopped into the pillow she had no more energy left to talk. I left her to rest and slipped out of the room.
Once alone in my own bedroom, I grabbed my phone and looked up what it meant to be “born with a caul”. I read frantically, my heart racing. It was when a baby was born with a piece of the amniotic sac covering their face. Some people called it born with a veil, and the baby was considered to be blessed with good luck and immune from drowning for their entire life. I found that part particularly ironic since I was terrorised with nightmares of drowning almost every night. Also, losing my dad at sixteen hadn’t felt very lucky.
Many believed babies who were born with a caul had supernatural gifts, and this part struck a chord in me. It seemed ludicrous, and yet, I couldn’t deny how real it felt when I saw what I did.
I thought of the dreams I’d had all my life, dreams of people I’d never met or seen before. Of the woman running from this house and throwing herself into the sea, and of the man being drowned at the beach. How I thought I saw a flash of Lady Maeve’s ghost when I’d gone into the castle. The experience was all too similar to what I’d gone through tonight.
Was I psychic?
Even asking myself the question seemed ludicrous.
With a growing sense of unease, I shut off my phone and crawled under the covers. My mind went to Sylvia’s warning about Noah. She said he was dangerous, but she hadn’t explained why. And for some reason, I questioned whether I should believe her. If she’d given me the same warning when he first arrived, I might’ve taken it to heart, but now? Now I didn’t know what to believe. Noah wasn’t exactly the most normal person in the world, but something about Sylvia’s statement seemed, well, off.
It took me a long while to fall asleep. I woke in the early hours of the morning, and the blasted sleep paralysis dug its claws into me again. This time, it didn’t last for seconds, but instead dragged out for long minutes. A shadow swarmed at the foot of my bed, slowly drifting up towards me.