The Darkest Soul of Light
Part 14
Vanessa was right. Immediately after getting into the cab Florence had a seizure. It stopped when they arrived home. So, Miss Ives asked the coachman to help her carry the child into the house. The girl was exhausted and Vanessa let her sleep.
"It's nearly two o'clock. Are you going to meet Dr. Sweet?"
The child appeared in the library so unexpectedly that the woman jerked at girl's soft voice right behind her back.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you," Florence apologized.
"You haven't startled me." Vanessa looked at Florence with stern intensity to understand how badly the girl felt. The child looked the same pale and adorable with slightly tousled curls from sleep. "Oh, I nearly forgot about it! I'll send a message that we won't come."
"No, please, go. You shouldn't decline the invitation because of me. I'm better but I'm not feeling like going. I'm sorry." The child apologized again as if it was her fault.
"Fine then, first you eat something and I'll go."
"I can…" Florence didn't have time to finish the phrase.
"You cannot warm food by yourself! I haven't eaten either. We have lunch together, end of discussion!"
The girl sighed but refused to argue further because Vanessa was bent on doing so whatever it might take.
"How do I look?" Miss Ives asked the girl. She was wearing a simple skirt, blouse and coat of different shades of black color but made of various fabrics, so it didn't look too dull.
"Too beautiful for a nun," was the reply.
"I'm not a nun!" The woman disagreed and a smile toughed the corners of her lips.
"You're always in black."
"Because it suits me!"
"Because you're afraid to try anything else," concluded the child.
"And now I'm speaking to an expert in the latest fashion," Miss Ives teased the girl.
"No, you're speaking to the person who's just tired of this mournful black color. It's like you are in a life-long grieving. Still you don't have time to change, so you should go, if you don't want your precious Mr. Sweet to wait," Florence stated reasonably.
"Are you sure you don't want to come? It'll be a lot of fun." Vanessa stared worriedly at the child not sure if it was safe to leave the girl alone for some hours.
"I'd better stay. There are a lot of books to read."
Miss Ives kissed the child on the forehead with parental gentleness and left the house. She has been doing it every time for about a week when the girl remained alone at home. It has been pretty awkward because Florence wasn't used to it. The child usually shrank her head into her shoulders as if waiting for a strike not a kiss. She curled herself into a ball and hid her head under the blanket trying to protect herself from Vanessa's kisses when the woman came into her room to say "good night". This was the part of experiment Dr. Steward asked Miss Ives to do. Now it was not different from previous times. Despite the fact that Florence hugged the woman in the morning and then collapsed because of the seizure, she was out of place every time the woman tried to kiss her.
Dr. Steward noticed that from the beginning. The child was too reserved and shy, too serious for children of her age. The girl spoke only about working, serving or the books she has read. She has never spoken about event when her parents or siblings showed any positive emotions towards her. They treated her neutrally or with rage maybe being jealous of her magnifying ability to memorize any information surrounding her. Therefore, Doctor asked Vanessa to praise girl's attempts to be weak and childish instead of being a slave-servant.
Miss Ives came home four hours later. In spite of going to check on the girl, she went into Sir Malcolm's studio, took a cigarette and smoked. After the encounter with a thrall in the mirror room and her flee from Dr. Sweet she was too agitated to appear before those brown curious eyes of the girl, who seemed to look right into her soul.
"Did he do anything wrong?" asked the voice that made Vanessa shiver as she was absorbed deep in a thought and didn't hear Florence coming into the room.
"Who?"
"Dr. Sweet."
"No, no, everything went well."
"Yet, you have been crying."
Vanessa didn't know how the girl figured it out because it happened an hour ago when she said 'good bye' to the man. She was roaming then the streets for a while just to hide those emotions from Florence. Still the girl noticed.
"Shouldn't you be in bed by now?" Miss Ives snapped at an inappropriate comment. How dare this girl judge her!
"Good night, Miss Ives." Florence hastened away seeing that the woman wasn't in the mood to talk about anything that had happened.
The girl changed into the nightgown, kneeled beside the crucifix that was standing on the mantelpiece and started praying. She prayed and prayed until the rotten silhouette of Miss Frankenstein with a baby in her hands appeared in the room as a hallucination. The child looked at the blonde ugly woman agape. Flesh on Lily's face and arms were in wounds, skin in abscesses but she was smiling.
"Thank you for giving me peace," a distant female voice whispered and the silhouette vanished forever.
The girl fell on the floor having another drastic seizure while somewhere in London a blonde woman died in the bed. Dr. Frankenstein and Mr. Gray were the witnesses of that unusual death. Lily thanked someone for giving her peace, said that she was going to her Sarah and her corpse already covered in a network of tiny cracks crumbled into dust leaving only an empty night gown on the bed. Both men were astonished to behold with their own eyes such an irrecoverable condition of a human corpse. They had a drink together then Doctor left and Mr. Gray remained in his enormous house with Justine who was weeping her heart out in her room.
Miss Ives didn't come to check on her that was for sure as Florence woke up on the floor next to the dying fire in the mantelpiece. She scrambled herself from the floor and lay down in bed blowing away the candle and clutching the rabbit close to her chest. The child wept herself to sleep too afraid to see the rotten corpse of the woman in the darkness.
"Miss Ives, did Mr. Gray send a messenger about the well-being of Ms. Frankenstein?" Florence asked the next morning.
"No, why?" Vanessa had forgotten about Lily's strange condition. She was too deep in thought about thrall's words about the white room where it was no time, where she was together with her demons. His words haunted Vanessa all night long. She couldn't remember, though.
"Nothing, I hope she's fine," answered the child.
"Ms. Frankenstein is an adult woman. I think Mr. Gray will take a great care of her, there is no need to worry," Vanessa replied quickly standing up to leave the room.
"Yes, of course," said the girl when Miss Ives was already out in the hall.
Saturday and Sunday flew away quite weirdly. Miss Ives was cold and reserved. She let the girl do whatever she wanted. She refused to go with Florence to the sermon as well as she didn't care what her 'niece' was doing throughout two days. That's why Miss Welch was in her usual serving mode cooking food, cleaning the dust and the floors and washing up. The girl was everywhere and nowhere to be seen. Florence couldn't understand why Vanessa changed so much after the date with Dr. Sweet but she was too polite to ask. She didn't want to disturb the woman because she wasn't feeling well lately and didn't want Vanessa to worry about her.
On Monday morning Miss Ives went to Florence's room because the girl didn't come to breakfast. She found the child in bed. The pillow was in stains of blood as well as girl's nightgown and upper part of the blanket. Florence probably had one of her seizures and bit her lower lip pretty hard because it was bruised badly. If she hasn't come round yet, it meant that the seizure was not long ago. Vanessa gently touched girl's forehead with her fingers going down slowly to her cheeks.
"Wake up, little one. Please, wake up," she whispered her fingers still caressing girl's cheeks.
"Miss Ives," followed the answer and immediately the lip cracked again. "Ow! It stings."
"You've bitten your lip quite badly," explained the woman. "Let's stop the bleeding." She took a handkerchief from the pocket and pressed it to child's lip.
"Oh, everything is in blood!" Florence mispronounced half of the letters because of the kerchief pressed to her lip.
"A laundress has to come today to bring our washed clothes and take the dirty ones. We'll put this linen into the basket with dirty laundry."
"I'm so sorry," the child apologized.
"Don't be, breakfast is ready. I'm going to Dr. Steward. Can you take care of yourself until I am back?"
Florence didn't mention that she had been taken care of herself since Friday without any problem. Sudden attacks of epilepsy troubled her more than the possibility to stay alone for some time.
"Yes, of course."
Miss Ives didn't mention the increase repetition of child's seizures that she didn't have in weeks but a great amount appeared to happen in these three days after her visit to Mr. Gray's house. The woman was concerned with something else. Words of that bloodless man were stuck in her mind and haunted her all these days. She was so agitated that each minute lasted for hours. She barely slept for two days in a row, she barely ate and only today in the morning Vanessa remembered to check on the girl. The hypnotism session ended well for her soul but not for her body. Miss Ives found the answer to the question she asked again and again trying to figure out what the room, where no light was, could look like. She felt totally exhausted, though. The burn from the cigarette hurt like hell, the daylight turned into twilight.
"I need to find her a place to stay," pronounced Miss Ives taking a sip of the drink Dr. Steward offered her.
"Whom?" After listening to Vanessa's story for several hours Dr. Steward hasn't been sure what the patient was talking about.
"Miss Welch. I've been chased by a demon, whose name is Dracula. I can't let the child become a prey. She deserves a better life."
"She already has a better life and Miss Welch understands it. I think her epilepsy comes from the environment she is in. Correct me if I'm wrong, but since Florence has been following her routine, eating normally, not only working but also playing, has she got any seizures?"
"She hasn't had any for almost two weeks. Something changed, though, after our visit to Mr. Gray, an old friend of mine. His beloved one, the woman who invited Florence to play with her young protégé, she lost consciousness in front of the girls. Florence was scared to death. I think she blames herself in this silly accident but after that Miss Welch had seizure after seizure. It was like a nightmare one attack more violent than another. I couldn't hush her until late at night. It was truly ridiculous because I fell asleep in her bed instead of keeping an eye on her during the night." Vanessa smirked remembering the last week's events.
"As I said something triggered the epileptic seizures. Miss Welch is of a neurotic type but she's afraid of showing emotions or when people share emotions with her. Does she feel awkward when you kiss her good night?" asked the old woman.
Vanessa caught herself thinking that she hadn't done that for two days. She forgot completely about the girl. She couldn't even tell if Florence went to church on Sunday or not. Miss Ives remembered only today's morning, the bloody pillow and the girl completely at a loss.
"Yes, maybe she thinks she isn't worthy or something. We had a weird accident in the church on Friday."
"Again that mysterious church!" the old woman said sarcastically.
Miss Ives told about strange bloody tears on the holly image caused, to her mind, by the child's praying.
To be continued...