A Drowned Maiden's Hair_ A Melodrama - Laura Amy Schlitz [77]
Someone was calling her name. Maud twisted, looking over her shoulder. The shore behind her had disappeared. She was in the center of the ocean, with the jetty rising from the water like the fin of a shark. Her head spun. In a moment or two, the rocks would lurch beneath her, and she would be lost forever.
Her name again. She looked down and saw without surprise that it was Caroline who called it — Caroline, who clung to the rocks of the jetty. Caroline’s hair fanned out, floating on the surface of the water. One webbed hand pried itself loose from the rock, groping toward Maud.
Maud understood what Caroline wanted. She wanted Maud to draw her to safety, to pull her from the deep before she drowned. But the webbed hand repelled Maud; it was mucilaginous, transparent, sticky. Maud knew that once she touched that hand, it would adhere to her skin, cling and pinch, and she would lose her balance. Caroline would drag her to her death.
So she stepped back and let Caroline drown. The glistening fingers opened and shut, and the dark streaming hair crowned the waves like seaweed. Maud seemed to hear Hyacinth’s voice chanting —
“O is it weed, or fish, or floating hair —
A tress of golden hair,
A drownèd maiden’s hair,
Above the nets at sea?” —
She woke. Her eyes darted from corner to corner of the dark room, trying to recover her sense of what was real and what was nightmare. Then heat lightning illumined the room with a blue flash. Maud saw her dresses hanging like ghosts from their hooks. She glimpsed the slanting ceiling and the flattened doughnuts of the bedknobs. She was in the attic, safe in her own bed.
She sat up. Little by little, her heartbeat slowed. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The terror of the dream left her, but her waking thoughts were no less frightening. A letter from Hyacinth had arrived that day, apologizing for her ten-day absence and promising her swift return. The Hawthorne sisters were coming back to hold the séance for Mrs. Lambert.
Maud swallowed. She dreaded the séance with all her heart. There was so much that could go wrong now that she knew Mrs. Lambert. If Mrs. Lambert recognized Maud’s voice, all would be lost. The Hawthorne sisters would lose the money they were counting on. Hyacinth would find out that Maud had disobeyed her and escaped from the house by night. And Mrs. Lambert . . . the lump in Maud’s throat swelled until she almost choked. Mrs. Lambert would see that once again she had been deceived. She would be bitterly hurt. Maud grimaced in the darkness. She wished she could stop thinking about Mrs. Lambert.
There was another flash of lightning. Maud stiffened, waiting for the thunder to frighten her.
But there was none. Maud let out her breath, grabbed the sheet, and lay back down. The creak of the bedstead frightened her. She spread out the sheet until it covered her whole body, in case Caroline was under the bed, reaching up with those sticky hands. The images from the nightmare returned. Maud was poised on the jetty and Caroline was reaching out to her. . . . Maud frowned, trying to remember. She thought she had dreamed of the jetty before. She wondered why the jetty should haunt her dreams. She had tried to walk it only once. Since the night when she made the sand crocodile, she had not left the house. She couldn’t risk seeing Mrs. Lambert again. Mrs. Lambert, Maud knew, would be searching the beach and the Amusement Park, looking for the child she believed to be homeless.
Maud was thinking of Mrs. Lambert again. She shifted irritably, curling herself in a knot. For one brief moment Maud entertained the idea of betraying Hyacinth and confessing everything to the rich woman. She shook her head. Nothing would be worse than that. Hyacinth would find out and send her back to the Barbary Asylum.
It was stifling hot under the sheet. Maud kicked it off and sat up.