Late that night, Phyllis lies in bed with the folded-over slip of paper she brought from the church clasped in her hand. She has opened it and looked at the names a dozen times throughout the evening, whenever she can spare a few seconds from her work, and the more she sees them, the more she is certain they are wrong. Margaret White, died 1785, and Jonathan Crawley, died 1842, may very well live on in their own afterlife somewhere, but neither of them is her ghost. She feels it deep inside, as if the ghost left some residue of itself behind when it possessed her body, some awareness primed to recognise its own identity. She will go up to the attic and present them anyway, as proof of her good faith, but not tonight. Tonight she is too tired, and too cold.
The temperature has been plummeting ever since she and Mr Molesley came back, and it's frigid in her room, even with a woollen blanket layered under her quilt and a hot-water bottle tucked in at her feet. She thinks of Lady Grantham on the floor below, sleeping safe beneath her heavy eiderdown with a fire to keep her warm and Lord Grantham by her side, and then thinks of Mr Molesley and wonders how he's faring in his own room on the other side of the locked door. Mr Carson said at dinner that snow is expected overnight, which means all the men will have to get up early to clear the drive. It worries her to think of Molesley out there wielding a shovel before dawn; he's not so very young, after all, and he has already done so much extra work today to help her, even without knowing why. If only she could tell him everything...
When she finally falls asleep, it happens entirely without her noticing, the transition from waking to dreaming is so smooth. Molesley has been in her thoughts, and at first he is in her dream as well, dressed in his winter coat and cap, holding out one of the heavy ledgers from the church.
We missed a book, he says, but I went back and found the right one for you.
He opens the cover, and she leans forward, eager to learn the truth at last, but then looks up at him in confusion.
The pages are blank, she says, and he shakes his head sadly, as if she has disappointed him.
The answer's there, he says. You've got to look.
I have looked, Phyllis protests.
Not hard enough, Molesley says. You've got to really look, Phyllis. You've got to look out. Look out!
The ground sways violently beneath her, and Phyllis turns around and finds she is in the oarless rowboat again, on the grey lake under the thunderous clouds. In her arms is the priceless box, its ornate surface dull in the stormy light. A wave rocks the boat, and she sits down hard on the bottom boards, in a puddle of cold mineral-smelling lake water. The box falls into her lap and she clutches at it desperately with wet, trembling hands, turns it over and sees that embedded in the pattern of light and dark green enamel, there is a letter C picked out in silver.
C is for Crawley, she thinks, and then flinches and cries out, hunching over the box to protect it, as lightning splits the sky and a massive crack of thunder follows right on top. The boat lurches, but before she can fall into the water, she wakes up, heart hammering wildly, sweat soaking her hair despite the bitter cold. Certain that the ghost will be there, as it was the last time she had the dream, she flings her arms up in self-defence, but then lowers them as she realises she is alone in the dark. The room is silent except for the soft tick of the clock, which tells her it is ten minutes past three in the morning.
Phyllis sits up in bed and hugs her knees under the covers, counting the ticks until her heartbeat slows and she feels calm enough to lie down again. It's clear she won't be sleeping any more tonight—she has never felt so wide awake in her life—so how will she use this time?
What she would like to do is go out into the corridor, unlock the dividing door, walk into Mr Molesley's room as bold as brass, and wake him up to explain everything that has happened to this point. She doesn't normally question the rules of working in service, which she knows from hard experience are there to prevent just such relationships as the one that ruined her, but at the moment it seems silly that she is stuck on this side of the door and he on the other. She isn't going to do anything improper with him (though if she is honest with herself, she can admit that part of her wants to, even knowing the cost), so why should they not talk?
Well, she thinks, there is someone she can talk to, and must talk to, whether she wishes to or not. The paper with the two names is still clenched between her fingers, somewhat crumpled, but intact; she smooths it out and then folds it carefully again, in half and then in quarters. She will go up and show it to the ghost and see how it reacts—not tomorrow or next week, but now, while she is still feeling brave and defiant.
Sliding out of bed, she puts on her dressing gown, and then for good measure, she takes the blanket as well, wrapping it around herself like a cloak against the cold. There are fine traceries of ice in the corners of her window, and she thinks surely it must be snowing by now. The idea of soft white snow falling on the roof, covering it over like icing sugar, is a soothing contrast to the wild electrical storm in her dream. She keeps it fixed in her mind as she opens the door to her room, peers into the empty corridor, and then steps out, trailing the blanket behind her.
On silent slippered feet, she pads over to the attic door, and feels a sense of inevitability when she sees it is open again. Of course it is. The ghost has been waiting for her to come; it doesn't want her to be shut out. Phyllis looks back over her shoulder at the dividing door, closed up tight as a safe, and thinks how unfair it is that the door she wants to go through is barred against her, while the one she dreads is standing open to invite her in.
She suffers a brief urge to turn and flee back to her room while she still can, but squares her shoulders and pulls the door open just enough to ease through. As she does, the lamp on the wall nearest her dims and goes out.
She climbs the stairs with only a twinge or two from her ankle, opens the door at the top, and enters the attic proper for the first time in nearly two weeks. Not really expecting anything to happen, she finds the dangling light cord and pulls it, and is surprised when a single bulb comes alive, sickly and flickering, but enough for her to find her way through the clutter. Everything is as precariously piled and packed in as ever, though she can see the dusty outlines on the floor where the hall boys have been up to collect the Christmas decorations and haul them downstairs in preparation for the season. She squeezes her way through to the place where she first saw the ghost—at least a thousand years ago, or so it seems—and there it is, already facing in her direction as if it has been expecting her, its glow pulsing with recognition.
Phyllis unwraps her blanket, lays it over the nearest box, and puts her hand into the pocket of her dressing gown, where the folded paper crackles under her fingers. She feels half sick with fright, but when she speaks her voice is surprisingly steady.
"I have something," she says. "I don't know if it's right, but it's all I've found so far. If I show it to you, can you read it?"
The ghost extends a long, wavering part of itself toward her, and she gasps and takes an instinctive step back, but then realises it is trying to make a human gesture of reaching out, the same way she would put out her hand to receive something.
"Wait," Phyllis says, and drawing the paper out of her pocket, unfolds it and spreads it out on the floor in front of her. "There. Now you can look."
She edges away as the ghost drifts forward and hovers over the paper, seeming to inspect it for a long time before turning its attention back to her. The indistinct features of its face sharpen and shift, creating a projection that could be a nose, then a shadow like a mouth, then dark hollows that might represent eyes, but all dissolve away almost as soon they are formed. It reaches toward her again, with two pseudo-arms this time, but stops short of touching her, and she understands that it is trying to obey what she asked of it last time they met, and at the same time making a request.
She doesn't want to do it—had hoped there would never be a need again—but now that she is here, she sees there is no other way. It isn't enough for her to speak to the ghost; she also must be able to hear what it has to say.
Shaking, but resolute, she faces it and spreads out her own arms, matching its gesture.
"Come into me," she says.