The Night Remains

She quickly found, of course, that no one was interested in her questions. One overly plump judge dismissed her outright with a wave of his hand when she cornered him. Another socks-and-sandals-billionaire complained directly to Desmond about her uncouthness in asking questions when he was there for a fundraiser, not an interview.

By the fourth event, she had seemingly annoyed so many guests that Desmond took her aside beforehand.

"Please, Abbie," he begged. "No questions. No spending time on your phone. Just... please. Serve the food. Look pretty. That's it."

She fought off the compulsion to throw her question in his face right then, but cooler heads prevailed. Instead, she meekly agreed and went back to work. As soon as he was out of sight, though, she cornered a rich couple that had once served as administrators for the Richmond Historical Society, and she prodded them with a dozen questions. Did they have any documentation about the building of the house? Did they know anything about its land? What had the house first looked like? Did they remember the case of arson?

As politely as they could, they blew her off and she left the event as empty-handed as she had come.

It was a foggy Monday morning, the day after her final scheduled event, and she rolled over in bed to answer a call from Desmond.

"Abbie?" he said. "I've got a hell of a job for you."

"Me?" she asked. The beads of sleep were threaded into her eyelashes, and she pulled her phone off her ear, looking at it for the time.

"A special request. There's going to be an event tonight at the Margot Estate. They need just one server, and they picked you."

"At the where?" She rolled back over in bed, her hand on her forehead. "The special what?"

"Yeah, tonight, can you do it?"

She swallowed, wetting her dry throat. "This is Desmond right?"

"Jesus Christ," he laughed. "I forgot you take a minute to wake up. Okay, let me break it down for you. Telesphoros Margot is in the city. He's opened up the Margot Estate, and he wants to host a private dinner to thank the more esteemed members of the city for all their help in preserving his family's estate."

"Telesphoros? Is that a name?"

"That's what he said."

"I don't..." She blinked. "Okay. But what... what am I doing? Serving?"

"Exactly. It's a small function. He doesn't have a house staff right now. They just need one server. It's only a dinner for ten people, but I thought you'd be right for it."

"Me? Why?"

"Well you keep asking everyone about that place, right? You're still obsessed about it, so I thought maybe you could get in there, take a look around and finally let it go."

She frowned. Pettily, she found herself tempted to reject the offer, but five days of research had given her almost no information about that place or the Margot family.

She nodded to herself, reaching for a glass of water she'd left on her nightstand. "Okay, fine. Same rate?"

"No," he said, a big smile in his voice. "This is the best part. The dinner is going to go from about nine to midnight, and he's going to pay you twenty-thousand dollars for it."

She choked on the water, sputtering. A spray covered her chest as she sat up in bed, and she covered her mouth, fighting off a cough. "Twenty thousand?"

"Twenty Thousand."

"I—just for serving? For like three hours?"

"For like three hours."

Her eyes shifted left and right, trying to comprehend. "So you and I get ten each?"

"No," he laughed. "Twenty for you."

Her eyes lit up at the thought of that much money, but something heavy weighed on her, telling her it was definitely too good to be true. Even if they were total assholes, though, Desmond would be there. If she was ever uncomfortable, she could just leave. The memory of her visit to the house moved through her then like the lingering memory of a sickness.

She shook her head, dismissing her concerns. That was just daydreaming. Her fear of that place was only the half-remembered nightmare of a child. She was not a silly girl anymore. It was just an ugly house. It had no more power than that.

A feeling took hold over her, as if she were sinking into the bed like a marshmallow into hot chocolate. "Alright."

"Great. Meet me there at eight. You can help me get everything set up in the kitchen."

They hung up, and she immediately fell back to sleep. For the first time since that summer four years earlier, she dreamed of shadows and fire, and when she awoke she felt as if she had just run a marathon. Her breath was haggard, her legs weak at the knees. In her chest, her heart pounded, and it took her a moment to focus on the ceiling of her bedroom to regain her centre.

It seemed insurmountable, to go back there.

But the day wore on, and she realized she was just stressed. She only had two days left to finish her piece, but her research—and her impromptu interrogations—had amounted to nothing. Going tonight was her last chance to find something truly interesting to write about. If she could get this piece done and nail it, who knew what it could turn into. And even if it didn't, twenty grand would make a big dent in her student debt.

She rolled her crappy, old blue car to the estate that night, and hearing it clunk and struggle on the incline of the long hill up to the house, she knew she'd made the right call. The car had served her well, but it was on its last legs. For the past five years, she had been constantly on edge, thinking that each winter would be its last. Even if nothing else came of this, she needed the money.

The estate lumbered beneath the dusky summer sky as she crept under its black gate, and she realized she had never before seen the place lit up. There were bright, yellow lights all around the brown stone of the place, like fairies chained to the façade, each throwing their light upon it like magic dust on a terrible troll. She drove past the main driveway but saw briefly that the tall doors of the estate had been flung open and a long, thick black carpet had been laid down the stairs to welcome guests.

At the servant's entrance behind the house, Desmond was already there with his big truck. In his arms he had a big heavy mixer, and a collection of boxes scattered on the driveway around him.

He greeted her warmly, giving her a hug, then he put her right to work.

The kitchen had been immaculately cleaned, but it lacked any of the refinements of modern living. Desmond had brought in all kinds of different appliances and tools and dishes, and if she hadn't known better she would have guessed this was a dinner for a hundred people, instead of ten.

There was not much for her to do before the guests were set to arrive, so she helped him with what she could. The whole time, she was keen to get out of the kitchen, to see what the rest of the house looked like, but she stayed, intent on doing a good job. There was a nervousness in her chest, an excitement from being, at last, inside the beast itself.

Her foot tapped quickly and lightly as she sat cutting green peppers. She was not a particularly good cook, but she helped prep to the best of her abilities.

He thanked her when she finished, and she joined him at a long island in the middle of the kitchen. From a small plate, he offered her a strawberry that had been cut in two halves. On the outside, it had pink and blue seeds, and she recognized it as the same kind she had eaten four years earlier. Inside its thick red hide, veins of white rings circled around an opening of darker red that had the shape of a perfect, delightful, warm vulva. She held the strawberry in her fingers, and, with a lick of her lips, she remembered its deliciously creamy taste.

With a happy little squeal, she took the strawberry into her mouth. It was soft and warm, as if it had come just from the sun, and she swallowed it down into her belly with a greediness she'd never before felt.

"From the gardens," he said. "It's still warm, yeah?"

She chewed with a delighted little moan, putting her hand in front of her face, her eyes sparkling at the deliciousness of it.

"Have the other half, too," he said.

"Yeah?" She picked it up excitedly and devoured it. She laughed, then bit her lip, enjoying its warmth as it rolled in her mouth then raced down her throat. "These are so good."

"Go on, then." He tried to chase her away with a wave of his hand. "Explore a little bit. Get it out of your system and give me a chance to work."

She took a deep breath. What she wanted most was to see the black book, but the sinking feeling made her want to put it off as long as possible. "Wish me luck."

"Luck," he said. But then he raised up a knife, innocently pointing to her. "Don't open any closed doors, though. That was basically Dr. Margot's only instruction."

She agreed and left him in the kitchen. She took the rightmost door and manoeuvred through a hallway into the beautiful sunroom that hung off the back of the house and overlooked the strawberry garden.

It was a room of rich, dark greenery. Little scrapes of green brushed against the glass windows. Terracotta pots hung from thin strings on the ceiling. Beds of plants were neatly tucked together, some thick with green and others with variously coloured flowers. Some beds were ripe with seedlings, and some were humble, fertile black earth waiting to receive them. Over the sides of tables, plant leaves hung and obstructed the aisles. In one corner there was a thick bush of wispy stems like a giant burr, and along the brick wall opposite the glass, there were a few huge pots filled with juvenile trees, their shadows hanging heavily over the rest. Some of the trees were still young and growing, but others went as high as the ceiling, where they bent and strained against the curving glass roof that looked up to the burgeoning stars above.

She petted the leaves of one tree, stroking them and feeling the ridges of their veins beneath her fingers. An impish part of her told her to pick them, but she resisted. Her hands brushed over delicate ferns, and, at a tray of yellow flowers, she bent over, nervously playing with her light ponytail as she smelled their sweetness.

The sun had laid down far across the lawn, the darkness creeping in, and in one corner, there were three pots of neon-blue and neon-pink flowers. She stared at them, not sure what it was at first that she was seeing. Then she realized: the flowers were emitting their own faint blue and pink lights. She came near, stroking their petals, feeling how soft they were, surprised by the warmth of them against her fingertips.

Furtively glancing around the sunroom, she pulled out her phone and took a photo of the glowing plants.

She probed into the dining room next. There was a long table there, but it had not been set. A fresh white cloth had been laid across it, and there was, in the middle of the table, a silver candelabra without candles. She looked at the ornate piece and saw on it that it had the initials of the silversmith who had made it: TM. She didn't know the work, but the handmade imperfections of its stamping made her think it was very old.

She took out her phone again and took one photo of the candelabra and a second of the silversmith's stamp. It might, at least, be a lead for her research.

On the dining room walls, there were several ornate paintings of what must have been members of the Margot family. One was a younger man with gentle black eyes, dressed in a well-rendered suit, with lots of unrefined, expressive brushstrokes in the dark edges of the painting. Another portrait was of a man with stark-white hair that stood up around his head as if the painting had been done while he was being electrocuted. His eyes were also dark like the other man's, but they were flecked with a pinkish colour that looked almost as if his eyes were made of glass instead of paint. He had on a dark-black dinner jacket, his mouth slightly open, and he had no airs of dignity about him. Under the portrait, there was a small gold plate that read: Telesphoros Margot I.

She took a photo of that as well, then stood back from the painting. Staring at the man reminded her of how she'd imagined the groundskeeper so long ago, with his long tongue hanging out of his mouth hole, and it unsettled her.

The house creaked, and she jumped. Her phone dropped to the carpeted floor, where it bounced and stopped under a pedestal. She muttered angrily, then bent over and picked it up. As she came back up, she saw on the pedestal a vase with no flowers in it. It was mostly-white porcelain decorated with a painting of the same blue and pink flowers she had seen in the sunroom. She turned the vase, seeing an illustration play out in a loop around it. The flowers led to a lava-red shape that looked also like a flower, but much bigger and streaking across the vase. Then she turned it farther, and on the back saw that there was only a rich, deep black smothering the light without reflecting anything back.

She took a photo of that too, and the house shifted again. At the end of its movement, though, there was a growling, needy purr that she did not understand. Her stomach lurched, as if someone was in the room with her, but she swept her head around to see no one there. She thought of that day, years ago, when she had tried to get into the house. There had been something trying then to sneak into her, and it made her clutch her phone tighter.

The more she explored the house, though, the more she became disappointed. There were no answers to be found here, just strangeness.

She found a grand staircase and pressed up against the wall as she mounted it. Her eyes were pointed to the top of the stairs, expecting someone to be there, to catch her and turn her back. That was how every second felt in that house. As if eyes were on her, and she was small and naked.

Yet, undeterred, she made it up and explored more closed rooms. Desmond had told her not to peek into any shut doors, but, well, if no one was there to catch her...

It was mostly unused bedrooms and bathrooms up there. They were uninteresting places emptied long ago, and she had almost given up when she opened the crystal-handled knob of one door and gasped. Inside the room, there was a strange circle drawn on the floor in what looked like red paint—no. She touched it tentatively. It wasn't paint. It was dried blood, and it flaked off the floorboards into her fingers as she stroked it. The circle was filled with runes and symbols which looked like nothing she had ever seen before. They were not hard and angular symbols, but mostly smaller circles with accenting lines and shapes that ran through them.

Her phone came out, and she took yet more photos. Next to the circle, there were some extinguished candles burned to their bases, and a small table along one wall that had a mirror with intricately engraved edges that was half-draped in a deep-red cloth. The cloth was smooth in her fingers, with flakes of little silvery metal and glass laying sprinkled atop it.

She pulled the cloth off the mirror. A jagged tremor of cracks ran through it, the glass shattered and the silver beneath it flecked and tarnished. She ran her fingers lightly over the glass, surprised by its warmth, as if hands had just clasped it.

Perhaps, this was not the work of the Margot family. The place had been abandoned for a long time. Maybe, before the Margot heir's return, some shitty kids had done this just to mess with trespassers. But the scene looked too fresh. The blood in the circle, though dried, seemed recent enough that it might have only been hours ago that it was laid.

The nervousness of her snooping transformed into excitement. If there was something here, if there was a real story, it would put her on the map. Maybe she could skip years of puff-pieces and paying her dues. Maybe she could establish herself as an honest-to-god journalist. She could be like her father, chasing down leads and doing important interviews, and all that time and money spent at university wouldn't be so meaningless.

She withdrew from the room, but as she stepped into the hall, there was the now-familiar sound of the house, creaking and groaning around her. Except, it was different now. Its presence was like a breath on her neck, and her arms tingled as she felt the whisper of words pass over her. She became still in the hallway, pinned there as if by something much bigger and stronger than her. She breathed softly, uneasily, her chest rising and falling, her heart beating only at its mercy—but then it was as if the force lifted from her, and she stumbled from the ritual room like an animal freed from a trap.

It was only in her mind, she told herself. She was imagining it.

She refocused on what she'd seen. What even was the story here? That the Margot heir was an occultist? That would require more than only some photos to get the editor to run it, and even if he believed her, there was no way a good editor wouldn't take what she'd uncovered and hand it over to someone more experienced to follow-through on it—to make a real piece of it.

She couldn't bring only pieces of a story to her father's editor. She had to bring him the whole thing. All her efforts to ask questions at parties had gone nowhere, though. No one wanted to be bothered with it. She had to find a way to convince the guests to speak with her—to confide in her.

Lost in her thoughts, every step had drawn her towards the study, and she took a deep breath as she realized where her feet were taking her. She had not thought about it every day, but since that morning, when Desmond had offered her the job, she had thought about that room more and more. Even after all this time, she could still paint with perfect clarity the picture in her mind of the lectern and its too-black book.

She checked her phone. It was almost nine o'clock. No one had arrived, though. Not even their host had announced himself.

She stopped inside of the estate's tall front doors. Outside, the empty black driveway hung there like a ribbon, the wrinkled folds of the city in the dark beneath it. To be inside of the house was a kind of intimacy with a monster she had never wished to experience. It was uncomfortable. It was horrible. It turned her stomach, and she felt with longing the heat from the warm world of summer that lingered just beyond those great doors—a world that now felt so alien within the bowels of the house.

She sidled, at last, to the threshold of the study. The round table with the hole in the middle was still there, ten chairs around it, and on the same side as the channel into its inner ring was the lectern.

The crystal chandelier gleamed and flickered above, decorated now in lit candles, and she couldn't help but take a deep breath as her presence pierced the stillness of the room with all life's strange perverseness, like flowers growing in a putrefied tomb.

The window to the outside world was dark and unseemly, but she could almost see the ghostly image of herself pressed there against the glass in the summer afternoon. She remembered the feeling of being there, wanting to be a part of the house, belonging to it.

The house made a noise, but this time, it was not the sound of creaking joists and rubbing stone. It was an actual voice, the words of the human tongue—and it was speaking French.

She paused just inside the study, her mind straining to hear what it was saying, but she did not know French, and soon the voice fell silent like a candle falls dark when snuffed by the wind.

Then, suddenly, she was not by the door to the study anymore. She was halfway across the room, almost to the ivory lectern and its evil black book.

When had she walked inside? A sensible part of her wanted to turn back, but... she couldn't. It just felt so right. The book was there now, simply in front of her. All of the house's secrets were massed against its dark bindings, waiting—wanting—to spill out for her. A good journalist couldn't stop now.