Excerpt: Night of the Edwardian Dead

Part 1 – In Which the Foreshadowing of Terrors and the Hinting of Secrets Takes Place; aka The Day Before the Night of the Living Dead

Chapter 1 – Frightening Adele

A scream, high in pitch, erupted out of the darkness ahead, filling the air with a piercing shrillness of the kind to stiffen limbs and turn heads. It certainly pierced the tender ears of one Miss Dorchester, a timid young woman of barely one and twenty, now traversing the rough old path between the great house of Romero Park and a cluster of mean abodes housing it’s more humble tenants. The horrific sound set her heart racing as well, whose amplified beats now rang loudly in the silence that followed the outcry, and in the resulting surge of fear, she stumbled on a patch of uneven ground in the path ahead and by near dropped the basket she was carrying. A thing dark and heavy rolled off the top of it, escaping a loose, draping cloth covering the basket, and, upon impact with the ground, broke open, displaying glistening guts held previously in check by a tight surrounding skin.
Clutching said basket closer to her, Miss Dorchester halted, unwilling to proceed, oblivious to the loss of one of her charges. The scream had come from an indeterminate place off to the left, and in that direction she turned, straining eyes and ears vainly in the low light of a sky darkening into night. The scream was followed hard upon by another outcry, this one louder than the first, higher, protracted, and it’s effect on poor Miss Dorchester was to cause her hands to relax involuntarily, and she did drop the basket this time, letting it fall without a glance and even stepping back, away from it, as if by doing so she could distance herself thereby from the source of the distress.
Even as she backed further away, the cry was echoed a moment later by sundry squawks and honks as geese and chickens scattered not far from her in the poultry yard off to her left. Our young Miss Dorchester was not by any means of a nervous temperament, but she had been a child of the Great City until not more than a handful of years ago, such that the quiet of the nights here in the country were more than a little disquieting to her, and the pitch blackness of those hours stirred her imagination something fierce. When she first came she had withstood the feelings of fear evoked by previously unknown creatures of the night - the eerie hooting of owls, and by the sudden plaintive cry of the whippoorwill - with a stolid lift of her chin, but screams, frightened fowl and running footsteps, as she now heard from the yard, were conspired to overcome her rational thinking and she was just about of a mind to retreat back to the safety of the thick and reassuring stone walls of her guardian’s family manse, when a figure stepped onto the path in front of her.
She froze involuntarily.
The figure, dark and impossibly large against a sky of indigo laced with small strips of wispy clouds lit up by a bright moon, was facing away from her, fortunately, and our girl hoped yet to slip away unnoticed by the hulk of blackness. She slid one foot back slowly, poised to pivot quietly upon it and walk off as quietly as possible in the other direction, when the imposing figure called out in the direction of the nearing footfalls, now also the source of further shrieks and cries, and thereby resolved itself into a mere mortal woman of flesh and bone.
As her eyes adjusted, there upon the path ahead of her stood Miss Jenkins, the housekeeper, and Miss Dorchester could now see that the lean elder woman was in the process of folding up a large sheet of linen from the lines, thus her unusual appearance in silhouette.
What the housekeeper had decried was this, “Lucy! Hans! Stop your tomfoolery this instant!” There was laughter now, then low whispering. In a tone perhaps less loud yet conveying more aggravation she continued, “The Master may be from home, but that is no excuse to run wild like a pair of banshees.” The voice of a penitent Lucy responded quietly with a fervent yes, ma’am, and approached the path, then Lucy herself scurried on towards the house to escape further notice, while the youth named Hans stayed out of sight in the dark and merely gave a good natured laugh, followed by a most gallantly apology which indicated nothing so much as his utter lack of penitence, to which Miss Jenkins responded with a tight: “The two of you make such a ruckus at times: one day I do declare you’re going to wake up the dead!”
Hans, who came strolling out of the gloom at this, hands deep in the patched pockets of his trousers, grinning as if it was a compliment, protested gamely. “I was only telling pretty little Lucy how the Harvest Moon’s afallin’ on the very same day as the autumn equinox an’ how they both be at Michaelmas this year.”
“You were trying to frighten her, is what you were doing.”
Knowing Hans could see her, Miss Dorchester figured it best to stay quiet. If the older boy didn’t greet her or address one of his cheeky comments to her, the housekeeper might not be made aware of her presence. Protesting further, Hans replied: “Folks say a Triple Night like that’ll bring out the spirits, and they’ll roam amongst the living in all places of darkness until the pull of the full moon wanes and send ‘em back to rest.”
“Nonsense.”
“Mayhap, ma’am, but I heard tell–“
“Never mind what all you heard tell of, my boy, you finish up in the yard.”
“Yes, ma’am.” With that he made her a tiny bow, and then aimed another at his employer’s ward, the uncomfortable difference in stations ever present in her interactions with any of the household except her own countryman and companion, her maid Giselle, and dear [Jane], of course.
And so came the end of Miss Dorchester’s schemes of retreat. She now quickly hurried to retrieve the basket in hopes that the stern housekeeper, who had been the one to give it her in the first place, should not find out she had allowed it to fall.
Miss Jenkins strode briskly towards her Master’s ward upon espying her there on the path, folded linen under one arm, intent on hurrying her along in her chore, “Adele, what ever are you doing here? You were already late coming for the larder, and now you’ll be later still getting back.” Miss Dorchester nodded, flustered and shamefaced. She hated letting people down, yet seemed to do so constantly.
Hoping to escape without further chastisement, Miss Dorchester heeded her elder’s admonishment and sought to squeeze passed the housekeeper on the path. Woe betides this brought her to the very spot where she had earlier lost part of it’s content and next thing her foot descended unwittingly down upon it. Right there in full view of Miss Jenkins.
More of the soft guts were forced out of their encasement with a low nasty sound that could not help but catch her attention, and then they lay there, glistening wetly at her in the moonlight, eliciting a sharp in take of breath from the matron.
Miss Dorchester withdrew her small foot from the viscera and shrank back, wishing she could melt into the shadows.
“Old Hetty will have no supper tonight without the charity you bring her, Adele.”
The scolding had commenced and Miss Dorchester knew full well it was not likely to end any time soon, so she shifted the basket to a fresh position on her arm and settled in as comfortably as she could. Having been adopted by the master of Romero Park and elevated from popular actress’s daughter to the position of a gentleman’s daughter had not brought her the freedom from chastisement and lecturing she might have wished. If anything, being scolded and criticized had become a constant in her life, as both Mr. Dorchester and Miss Jenkins seemed to think she ought be fed on a steady diet of it. “These wares shall have to suffice to feed Hetty and her family for the next several days before the harvest is finally in, and here you have gone and wasted one of her blood sausages.”
Using her free arm, Miss Jenkins made a grab for the oozing tube of meat and managed to scoop it and it’s innards up cleanly in one hand. “Cook spent all day making these the day before,” she reminded the girl disapprovingly, “Shouldn’t go to waste. Sure Mr. Snuffles will appreciate it.” Here she took a breath to fuel her next admonition, “It is the time honored duty of the lady of the house - or in our case, the young lady of the house - to administer to the poor, providing charity and relief to all those in her domain who are in need. Mr. Dorchester’s brother’s wife - Mrs. Dorchester as was - stocked from the larder herself and made her rounds early in the morning with ever a smile on her dear pock-marked face. Lovely lady, in all but looks, of course.” Wedging the sheet further up into her arm pit with a shrug, Miss Jenkins finished with: “You should look to be more like her, Adele. It would please the master greatly.”
Miss Dorchester wasn’t convinced of this at all, as her guardian did not seem to be a man pleased by much of anything, except perhaps beauty, but she tried her best to look like she agreed without going so far as to commit to it by speaking or nodding. This particular lecture looked to be on the shorter end, and might conclude at any moment.
Still clutching the remainder of the sausage and its external innards as if they were the shards of an expensive broken vase, eying the basket from hence they came, the housekeeper added: “And mind you, Mr. Larkin says that Johnny Boy had it from Sarah that Old Hetty has taken ill, but it’s nothing contagious, so you be on your best English behavior and don’t make them feel as if you cannot wait to be gone from their home.
“Now, off with you.”
As Miss Dorchester let the basket sink to arm’s length to ready it for walking, and continued to make eye contact with the woman to verify that she had truly and finally been dismissed, Miss Jenkins spoke her last.
“Go on, then. Make haste, make haste. With the days getting shorter and the night’s getting colder, it’s neither seemly nor safe for a young lady such as yourself to be out on the grounds this late.”

The girl with the basket walked as fast as she could, it was darker now and the great house was no longer visible, leaving her in her own little world of overgrown bracken and a ground partially covered in fallen leaves, a surrounding which hardly seemed to alter no matter how much she pushed forward. Oh, how she wished she had set out earlier.
Her frail companion Giselle had been laid up with a headache since after breakfast, and Adele, our dear Miss Dorchester - as I believe we have become acquainted with the young lady well enough by now to address her as such, and if we are not yet on intimate footing, soon will be, as she continues to lay bare her soul to us – had kept hoping her maid would recover quickly so that she could accompany her mistress on this most uncomfortable of tasks, but Giselle had remained indisposed through-out the afternoon and into early evening, at which point Adele knew she must acquiesce and go forth alone.
The bracken thinned out here, opening onto a large, irregular clearing of sorts, and it relieved Adele to watch a hovel - situated in the approximate middle of the clearing and which was her intended destination - grow in size as she labored forwards, watching her footing on the stony remnant of a path, keeping an eye on her skirts to keep them in turn from tangling with the occasional sticker bush along the way, and endeavoring, mostly in vain, to minimize the intrusive thumping of the basket against her hip at each step.
The words of her first governess, Miss Hurst, a respectable but grim spinster living on the continent at the indulgence of wealthier family, the one hired by Mr. Dorchester to tutor her on the ways of an Englishwoman before he would come take her back with him to Romero Park and adopt her formally, scolded her even now. Mademoiselle Adele, hardship is to be endured stoically, with composure, in silence, not complained about incessantly. You have been pampered into an endless childhood that might be acceptable here in Paris, but would never be tolerated back home. An Englishwoman never complains. But in her head, Adele complained copiously.
She wanted to be good and please her father, to adopt English manners as he had adopted her, so she didn’t complain for anywhere near as long as she would have liked, and then tried to push a smile up on her face, but it sank back down as soon as she saw how close she had come, for now it had come to it, she had no desire to enter the abode, and so she stopped, ostensibly for a rest, letting the cumbersome basket down slowly.
Though the sky had now darkened to a purplish black, the stars were held back from their full nightly glory by a moon now as good as full, excepting the fact that tomorrow night it would be just a bit fuller still. Adele knew - from hearing some of the servants talking earlier today as they labored to ready the best sitting room, all the while grumbling at how the master could pull his people off the all important business of harvesting to prepare the manor for guests and other festivities best left until after Michaelmas - that the next night, the night of Mr. Dorchester’s last minute country ball, and the event that would announce her engagement to the world, would be Harvest Moon, and that the moon was called such owing to it rising already at sunset, thus allowing, unbroken, some form of light to fall from the heavens to the earth. And she was thankful for it, for elsewise she should have been tromping along in the real dark and her imagination running wild.
A dog approached Adele now, slipping from out of a nearby bush with its head mostly down and its tail tucked between its legs. It came up to her, sniffing, but shied away at the last moment and shuffled off into another swath of undergrowth. Adele watched it go, wondering at its lack of licking and snuffling her hand for attention and for tidbits of the meats she carried, which had been the case previously when she’d come with Giselle and Jane the other times. Jane, knowing her discomfort, would have accompanied her this time as well, but her father, and Jane’s employer, had insisted before he left for destinations unknown that she not do so this time, though no reason for this alteration was given and, judging by his tone and demeanor, no gainsay possible. So there was nothing for it but to do her duty.
At first she knocked on the lopsided door that fronted the cottage, but timidly, too softly to be heard inside.
Again she knocked, louder, yet again no response.
But just as Adele was about to rap on the old wood harder, she heard a sound from inside, like a faint moan. “Old H–I mean, Mrs.–...” (and here, to her embarrassment, unable to recall the surname of these good people, our flustered Adele reverted to her native tongue) “Que-ce’st que t’ill appelle? Maisons? Non, ettée ‘Masons’, the Masons, oui, they are the Masons,” and now speaking up she called in, “Mrs. Mason? Are you there?” But again the only reply seemed to be a groan several seconds later.
Remembering that the old lady was said to be ill, Adele pulled open the squeaking door and entered slowly, adding, “It is me–I, Miss Dorchester... from the great house... I’ve come with...” Her voice trailed off as she peered around the one room living space, seeing that was very dimly lit, with only a single candle, on the table near the door, burning for illumination. In size it was no more than a stub, and would shortly go out by itself.
Adele concentrated harder on locating the occupant, for the sooner she gave the patient the food and made nice, the sooner she could escape, and hoped to do so before the light was gone. Over by the bed another low moan emerged, and Adele could now see a figure sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over with its head hanging down. The next groan was almost inhuman, and right then and there our young heroine decided that she would make this as quick as she could, no matter how she might be scolded for it later, because if the old woman was that sick, she, fearing the infirm and devoid of a bedside manner, was the last person to tend her.
“Mrs. Mason? Do you need the doctor? You look like you need a doctor.”
The old woman rose up from the bed upon hearing this and walked, very slowly, towards her visitor, each step seeming a great effort.
“No, Mrs. Mason, no need to get up - certainly not on my account - you should probably be lying down.” But the shambling woman continued her approach as if she didn’t hear Adele, moving into a modicum of light shed by the, by now yet shorter, candle, and Adele gasped. Old Hetty looked poorly, as if she had arisen from her death bed to greet her visitor, and Adele became, at the same time, frightened for her, and frightened of her.
But the old woman didn’t stop even as she neared Adele, she put one slow foot in front of the other, head lolling slightly to one side, causing Adele to step back, wanting to maintain a bit of distance between herself and someone so ill.
Holding out the basket as a buffer between them, Adele stepped back yet again, and this time she must have almost reached the wall by the door, as two or three items clattered to the floor behind her, one hitting her painfully as it fell, which she thought were most likely farming implements hung on pegs there if memory served her, causing her to cry out. At this Old Hetty seemed to lunge forward, presumably to help her, but Adele warded her off with the basket again - ashamed of her behaviour but afraid of the woman’s infectious touch - and though the crazed patient kept coming, frightening Adele by this persistence in proximity, Adele’s attempts to keep her away caused the draping cloth to slide off the top of the basket and within seconds of being exposed to its contents, the old woman’s attention was wrenched from the girl and she immediately scooped up something from inside the basket and stuffed it into her mouth.
It was one of the fresh sheep’s liver Miss Jenkins had added to the basket as a bonus to the long links of blood sausages and day old bread already packed up neatly inside it when Adele arrived.
“Poor Mrs. Mason, why you must have been starving,” Adele spouted as she watched her rip into the liver, taking large bites and hardly chewing, now truly feeling guilty for her lateness, “But you mustn’t eat so fast, it will not digest properly and then you will–“ Here she broke off as Old Hetty crammed the last of the sheep intestine as if blindly into her face and turned back to Adele and came for her again, still looking as hungry as she had before, but now seeming to have more energy and strength in her.
All sympathy drowned by her fear, Adele shoved the basket back up between them, practically pushing the topmost of the blood sausages into Mrs. Mason’s reddened nose to get her to focus on them, creating the exact response she was hoping for, in which the woman’s arms came up involuntarily, sharp nails scraping into the soft flesh of Adele’s pampered hands, but leaving Hetty clutching the basket herself.
As soon as she could, Adele let go the basket all at once and stumbled back for the door, berating herself for her cowardice, scolding herself, not in the harsh voice of Miss Hurst, but in the even and quiet tones of her current governess, who would have, if she were here, guided her charge patiently through the proper steps, reminding her to assist the ill woman in sitting down, reminding her to prepare a plate of the food for her, to encourage the patient to take sips of water, all that was good and kind to a woman so struck by illness she had gone almost feral. Apologizing to Jane for not being the well-bred young lady her governess had worked so hard to make her in an rush of muttered internal dialogue, Adele grabbed for the door and threw herself out of it, closing it rapidly and taking off down the path as fast as she could.